If I were brainwashed, I wouldn’t have asked the question.
Free Trade, for the last 30 years, was anything but. Full agreement.
Mercantilism? Absolutely, but on a scale even more pernicious - China sends their kids to US universities, then goes home, and with stolen US tech violates patents, copies products, and destroys companies.
The more classic example is the US selling scrap steel to China, and China selling it back to us as pots, pans, etc. Still, full agreement.
If you allow unfettered illegal immigration into the US, I agree that we cannot compete with other countries on that basis. I, however, disagree that if we decided to compete on a labor basis with other countries WITHOUT unfettered illegal immigration, that we’d lose.
I’m already seeing it in the electronics industry. Everything you can imagine is becoming a sensor platform, and people handling boards on a manufacturing line isn’t going to work any more, for example. Too many quality issues, and the traces and spaces on these boards are dropping into the microns.
You need people to load part reels onto pick and place machines, restock solderpaste, CAD/CAM, etc. You can’t have them picking up finished boards and walking them over to some manual test station.
As an example.
Even our most advanced electronics manufacturing lines are woefully backward. Horrible. Tons of room to improve, and more importantly the circuit boards are versioning now every QUARTER.
The folks making new sensors (here in the US, Germany, France, Poland, Romania) are coming up with brand new toys every week.
There are new, small, automotive OEMs cranking up every quarter now. Little companies of 40 people making new transmission control systems, and then selling out to guys like Chrysler, Valeo, Ford, Aptiv, etc.
China has worn out its welcome. I’m seeing it in electronics and automotive especially. To the extent they unfairly protect their market and expect unfettered access to everybody else’s, they are starting to feel the burn.
I think they’ll either collapse soon, Soviet Union style, or they will give up and start acting like their actual economic condition, which is extremely precarious.
I’m comparing notes, based on what I’m seeing. Bill Clinton, talking to those ship building people in Maine about how their jobs were going away, and not coming back - he’ll burn in hell for it. And those people ate it up.
However, there are people in Poland and Romania who are smart and resourceful. They build fine products, and they have good new ideas.
We should buy that stuff. At least that’s my opinion.
If Russia had an economy that had SOMETHING other than petroleum associated with it, the world would be a lot safer.
You are so full of gloBULList shinola I can't finish reading your screed. Go away.