I’d point to the obvious case of what happens when the US pushes out foreign agriculture workers. The crops sit in the fields and rot because farmers can’t afford to pay competitive wages for people to pick crops. You can make more money at McDonald’s, in more comfortable conditions, on a more consistent basis. Why work on a farm for $5/hr, no overtime, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and live in crap housing?
There’s ethical considerations, but I question whether it’s feasible to profitably bring back a lot of manufacturing to the US. Occupational health and safety rules are going to make a lot of these manufacturing plants less cost competitive. I guess we see why they’re trying to eliminate the EPA.
It seems like the plan is to degrade the environment in the US and kill off labour protections to make things worse for most people, but better for the super wealthy.
Your post is making the case against US trade policy over the last 20-30 years. They tried to specialize in higher skill industries requiring more education and de-industrialized. At the end of the day, many people in the USA simply can’t do the jobs that are in demand and they want more basic jobs that only require community college. And to make matters worse, they have unleashed a student debt plague upon themselves.
You’re not making any sense, you seem to not understand the notion of comparative advantage. You keep writing on here about American idiocy and then you think a trade policy that makes the American economy specialize in high skill service work and science/tech/engineering is a good idea. This is utter madness. A lot of people working in IT at a typical F500 company are either H1bs or children of immigrants.
Just to be clear, having manufacturing in places like China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, etc is very bad for the global environment. Not to mention that you need to bring all these goods into the USA via shipping and transport, which is also very bad for emissions.
You favor carbon tax but do you realise that putting tariffs on foreign goods is partially a carbon tax? The carbon footprint of something made in China that is imported into USA is far higher than something that is made domestically.
The US is sitting at 4% unemployment which is pretty good. The options for low skill workers are going down because it’s getting cheaper to automate a lot of menial tasks. We don’t need as many people in the mail room anymore because we have email and the increase in parcels doesn’t make up for the drop off in letters and memos that need to be hand delivered. Tariffs won’t fix that. We don’t need 10s to hundreds of people to unload a cargo ship by hand anymore as we have cargo containers and cranes. Tariffs won’t fix that. We don’t need elevator or switchboard operators anymore. Tariffs won’t fix that. Tech is killing off the simple jobs more than free trade is.
No, this is a complete myth. This is what Andrew Yang was saying a while ago and Paul Krugman corrected him. The productivity and automation aspect is overhyped. The German economy is 26% manufacturing, USA is at 11%, and Canada is also around 11%. There are still many high paying jobs in manufacturing.
Producing them in North America is bad for the global environment too. It’s the production process that’s the problem more than the location that’s the issue.
This is completely irrelevant. A country should specialize in what they are good at, as expressed by comparative trade advantage. There is absolutely no way that the de-industrialization of the United States reflects true comparative advantage.
But the production processes in North America are way cleaner, more capital intensive, etc. Production processes in Asia are dirty as hell and rely more on cheap human labor.
Germany also has a median age that is nearly 7 years older than the U.S., a lower birth rate, and a vastly better public education system. They’re producing technically advanced things. Trump’s chasing after jobs making plastic widgets, sweatshops, and simply assembly.
Read the stories about the screw-ups on the manufacturing at Boeing.
Donald Trump is celebrating what he called the “unbelievable results” that his tariffs have achieved in slowing the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
Mr. Trump said punitive border levies on Canada, Mexico and China would remain in place until the deadly narcotic is no longer entering his country.
It will never get to zero. Why should Mexico and Canada keep devoting resources to this if there is no tangible reward from the US? I think Trump is going to find in the future that countries are not going to scramble if he doesn’t reciprocate.
Way too much welfare and not enough investment has led to less productivity.
Trump has led to a MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) effect as it has allowed European politicians to ignore the whining of the many welfare special interest groups.
Pretty sure those are a thing of the past