1/3 of South Carolina’s Manufacturing Jobs Have Disappeared Since NAFTA

breitbart.com ^ | February 19

[Helicondelta]

1/3 of South Carolina's Manufacturing Jobs Have Disappeared Since NAFTA AP Photo/Paul SancyaAP Photo/Paul Sancya by JULIA HAHN 19 Feb 2016 919 At a CNN town hall Thursday, businessman and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump once again put the issue of manufacturing front and center in the 2016 race.

When CNN's Anderson Cooper pressed Trump on whether a U.S. president ought to be sending cease and desist letters and whether he would continue to do so as president, Trump said, "maybe to China" -- pointing out the extraordinary job losses Americans have experienced through trade policies:

No... I would be sending them to China to stop ripping us off. I would be sending them to other countries to stop ripping us off. I'd send them to Mexico. And when I say cease and desist, maybe it's equivalent, OK? Maybe I do it with my mouth.

Federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests Trump's argument on ending one-sided trade deals may resonate in South Carolina. According to the federal data, South Carolina lost 1/3 of its manufacturing jobs since U.S. signed NAFTA in 1994.

[Alberta's Child]

The point is that there really is no "norm" in a modern economy where technology changes rapidly. And that would probably apply all the way back to the dawn of the industrial age.

The way I see it, there's one basic dilemma that throws a lot of the conventional wisdom, economic theories, and business practices out the window:

1. As the world gets more complex, the cost of building and operating the industrial infrastructure to support it grows exponentially.

2. As technology advances, the expensive industrial infrastructure becomes functionally obsolete more rapidly.

The massive growth of government is the direct result of this -- because we've reached the point where the power of a totalitarian government are the only means of getting an adequate return on a costly investment in almost any major industry.

[Alberta's Child]

LOL. Thank you!

[Bryanw92]

>>Most of them went to law school because they were incapable of working in a STEM field.

I work in a STEM field. At the engineer level, we get a mix of people who are smart enough to do the work with a real desire to do it, but we also get the ones who are getting their ticket punched to get into management.

Below that level (the skilled technician levels), we get no one from the Millennial generation. The smart kids go to college and are too good to work with their hands, even though the pay is higher than that of a non-PE engineer. The dumber kids who can’t hack college certainly can’t handle a technical job.

I’m not being “anti-American” for being critical. The true anti-American is the person who will not permit criticism.

>>Shut the H-1B spigot off then salaries go up and STEM majors become real popular again. Your Anti American ignorance is why Trump is doing well. Go Trump, go!

You are right here. Shut off the H1-B spigot! We need people to see that a STEM degree for a white man is not a waste of time and money (as it is right now) and then we need to give them incentive to improve their STEM KSAs instead of working on their MBA as soon as they get their first job.

This will twist your shorts, central_va, but my views on this are why I AM supporting Trump. It’s not anti-American. It is pro-American.

[Alberta's Child]

I work in a STEM field, too.

I admit that I am somewhat biased because my particular STEM field (civil engineering) is probably more heavily influenced (for better and for worse) by the public sector. This is why I pursued a managerial track almost from the first day of my career, even though I keep and maintain my professional license.

[Bryanw92]

>>I admit that I am somewhat biased because my particular STEM field (civil engineering) is probably more heavily influenced (for better and for worse) by the public sector. This is why I pursued a managerial track almost from the first day of my career, even though I keep and maintain my professional license.

I’m in Industrial Automation. I’ve worked in manufacturing, power generation, and water/wastewater treatment. I’m in management now, but I resisted that for a long time, preferring my work of playing with the big toys.

[Alberta's Child]

I envy you. It’s hard to play with “big toys” like roads and bridges. LOL.

[Rashputin]

You can pull anything you like out of your ear and pretend it's what I'm advocating in spite of my having never said any such thing but that's an obvious tactic to try to distort the debate thereby avoiding the real issue which is the cost of manufacturing here vs the cost of doing so overseas.

Import tariffs raise the cost of bringing goods manufactured elsewhere into the country.

If a company wants to leave, so be it. Let them deal with the added tariff costs that drive the price here up, preferably above the cost of making the same product here. If a company wants to pay the tariffs, then fine, let them go and let them take the "I got mine, eff you and your country" advocates with them.

Let companies like Apple pay the cost of toxic waste and evil CO2 from coal fired electricity generating plants in China just like they'd be beat to death here in the US over the same things and such companies will be fighting such regulations and absurd added costs here instead of advocating those things then moving elsewhere to avoid the consequences of their own actions.

No one honest can pretend that my advocating such tariffs is the same as what you say is my solution, especially since the US had such tariffs in place throughout most of our history and therefore there's a clear record of what such tariffs entail.

have a lovely day

[gg188]

1. Ted Cruz says he opposes TPP.

2. Club For Growth fervently supports TPP.

3. Club For Growth has (so far) donated over $700,000 to the Cruz campaign.

Don't forget what NAFTA did to us:

NAFTA was simply economic permission to crush U.S. tariffs, so huge companies could produce products overseas for embarrassingly low wages and then import the pieces back into the U.S. either whole or for assembly, without paying previously-imposed tariffs. Wages and environmental regulations were laughable, though many companies have now fled Mexico in favor of even lower wages and virtually no pollution standards in third-world countries.