Wealth is created by making stuff. Or more correctly making stuff other people would like to have. The more (good) stuff you make the more wealth you have created. Cars, corn, casinos, whatever were all made by somebody or a group of somebodies. While gold bars or barrels of oil were not "made" they were discovered and processed into a usable product by somebody so I am going to throw them into the same bucket as the (good) stuff somebody made. There is no other way to create wealth other than making stuff. Everybody not involved in making stuff is just getting a slice of the wealth created by somebody making stuff.
A doctor maybe preforming a valuable service by saving your life but he has not created any wealth. Dido the bartender that hands you a beer after a hard day of bashing Trump.
Does our trade policy encourage us make more stuff here or does it encourage our producers to produce else where?
Ok lets do the math. Making stuff produces wealth our trade policy encourages our producers to produce else where. Ergo our trade policy is causing us (USA) to lose wealth. Put another way we are getting poorer while the productive nations (China) are getting richer.
:) logic is your friend.
Yes there are other reasons manurfactoring and jobs are fleeing the USA but trade our policy is not helping producers here at home in the least.
Anyone not directly involved in those things is only adding value at the margins and not creating anything. If another country is exporting those durable things to you and you are not doing those wealth creating activities anymore then your country is growing poorer by the day.
You may not care but just so you know what is happening....
Great Britain was the first country to commit suicide by de industrializing. They are the example to NOT follow.
Funny how they don't teach this in bidness skool.
I know all that and have been the business of making stuff for decades. In retirement I still am but on a much smaller scale.
You misunderstand the most important part of the process.... getting paid. You can make all kinds of stuff but if you can’t sell it and then most importantly, get paid, making is for naught.
Rather than create wealth, you have lost it.
I would recommend you to visit local craft show where makers and artists have stuff they have made for sale. It is a small but illustrative market. Some vendors are selling stuff very well. others are not and have lots of unsold and unsalable inventory. The point is regardless of the size of the enterprise, you can make stuff but the business will fail if the stuff can’t be sold.
Many many formerly prosperous companies found they could make stuff but couldn’t sell it...... too expansive, not competitive.
My retirement job involves visiting companies both very large and very small that make and sell stuff to export customers. They make it and get paid.
I also visit on behalf of clients abroad, dead companies that are selling their still usable equipment and machines to buyers overseas. The Americans could make stuff but couldn’t sell it or get paid so they ceased operations. The foreigners are buying the machinery to have a crack at making the stuff on a different cost basis. I visit the dead factories and be sure the bones being sold are the bones being bought. It is depressing to see
The task for America, that is BTW well underway, is to create new stuff to be sold. We are not going to ever resume making the old stuff. We are after all America, and creating and making is what we do.