“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, December 05, 2016

The US used to be a manufacturing juggernaut, Trump's bringing that back

By trying to get companies not to relocate production to Mexico, China, or elsewhere, Trump isn't "picking winners and losers" in an otherwise free market, as he is being criticized for.

The US doesn't compete in a free market, through heavy taxation and ridiculous regulations, US companies cannot compete at all with companies in other nations with virtually no regulations and very low tax and wage burdens.

I think Trump is merely saying, "don't leave until I can make the business environment here in the US competitive with other countries in the global, open-border economy."
 
And if the threat of tarrifs gets their attention, good. When the taxes are reduced, right-to-work laws are passed in each state, onerous regulations are rolled back, the domestic energy industry is revived, and trade deals are entered into such that there is actually the semblance of a free global market, THEN and only then will US companies be competing on a level playing field.

As a free-market guy who left the GOP because of the bailouts and the notion of "too big to fail", I don't have a problem with that.

Trump and I are A-OK with his plans to repatriate US businesses.

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree that it is our government policies that have been chasing our manufacturing jobs away, but there is more to out trade policies than our self destructive policies. Global free trade only works with countries that have free (or reasonably free) markets. Free trade with China has been a disaster for this country. As we started trading with China, their citizens and no money to buy our goods. As their standards oaf living has increased, they are limited in their choices by their government. The government doesn't allow our products to compete in their market. They open and close markets to us as political leverage. They manipulate their currency. They force companies that want to do business in China to build plants in China, and then steal their intellectual property. Free trade only works where our trading partner has a free market for our goods to compete. Europe is OK (not great but OK). Free trade made sense as a cold war political philosophy. After the blood letting of the 20th century, trading made a lot more sense than killing each other. But we allowed the entire world to screw us over in the interest in real politic. With our debt mounting, we need to start looking at trade in the following terms. What is in it for me?