Posted on 12/01/2016 1:04:51 PM PST by SeekAndFind
There's no doubt Team Trump is delighted by Carrier's decision to keep in Indiana roughly half of the 2,100 jobs that the maker of heating and air conditioning equipment had planned to shift to Mexico. As Steven Mnuchin, Trump's pick for treasury secretary, told CNBC yesterday, "This is a great first win without us even having to take the job."
Actually, it's their second win. Trump also lobbied/nudged/cajoled Ford into changing its mind about shifting a sport utility vehicle production line to Mexico from Kentucky, not that doing so actually would have cost American jobs. But Carrier, especially, had become a potent symbol of Trump's economic nationalism after video of Carrier's initial offshoring decision went viral. And in response to Carrier's reversal, Trump took a victory lap on Twitter: "Big day on Thursday for Indiana and the great workers of that wonderful state. We will keep our companies and jobs in the U.S. Thanks Carrier."
But how many Trump "wins" can the American economy afford? By themselves, the moves by Ford and Carrier are inconsequential — maybe even to Carrier's workers over the longer term. It's hardly an uncommon practice at the state level to offer incentives to lure corporate relocations or to keep firms from leaving. But the practice has mixed results. For instance, Dell closed a North Carolina plant in 2009 just five years after receiving millions in state tax incentives to open it. Production then moved to Mexico.
But more broadly, this is all terrible for a nation's economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders. Yet America's private sector has just been sent a strong signal that playing ball with Trump might be part of what it now means to run an American company. Imagine business after business, year after year, making decisions based partly on pleasing the Trump White House. In addition, Trump's hectoring on trade and offshoring distracts from the economic reality that automation poses the critical challenge for the American workforce going forward.
To be fair, exactly why Carrier reversed course is still something of a mystery. Carrier says state "incentives" were an "important consideration," along with Trump's commitment to creating a more pro-business climate in the country. Those would be the carrots. Then there are potential sticks, which may have been far more critical than tax incentives or other potential subsidies. Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, is a large federal government contractor and perhaps views the potential costs of keeping those factory jobs — a small fraction of the company's 200,000 employee workforce — in America as the price of doing business with Trump's "America First" administration. Indeed, one Indiana official, Politico reports, thinks the deal was driven by concerns United Technologies "could lose a portion of its roughly $6.7 billion in federal contracts."
Of course it wasn't so long ago that Republicans were attacking the Obama White House for its "crony capitalism," including the auto bailouts and clean energy investments in firms like Solyndra. Republicans, on the other hand, were supposedly stalwarts for competitive capitalism and vehemently against government "picking winners and losers." Some even said they were "pro-market" rather than "pro-business."
Now, not so much. Which makes you wonder if either party is willing to strongly fight for free enterprise and market-driven economic policy anymore. In her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel saw the major dividing line in American politics as less left vs. right than the "dynamists" vs. the "stasists." The former values change and experimentation, as messy as those things can be. Dynamists live in anticipation of the future because they just know it will be a great place. The stasists often are nostalgia-ridden and willing to use top-down control to keep things as they are or try to shape them into familiar forms. Today they fight globalization, tomorrow it might be robots and artificial intelligence in order to "save jobs."
This time, at least, score one for the stasists and the cronyists.
This is just another illustration of what we have done before God in the name of globalism. Jumping out of the “statist” (scare quotes deliberate) frying pan, we have jumped into the globalist fire, and we will be picked clean by the lazy countries of the rest of the world. Just be a spot for a factory, but don’t do anything else you don’t absolutely have to.
Exactly!
Well how about letting globalism be a forte for you? Then come back and let us have a discussion.
“Jumping out of the pan and into the fire” is a common expression for excellent reason.
But the asswipes weren't done. Corporations went international and having the USA and the Feds doing their bidding was not enough. Now they are tying to dissolve international borders! It's a bridge to far.
Who should prevail? Customers, big business in league with governments, or demagogic statist governments protecting their nation?
There may be a good reason to be international, if you have to build and sell in the same spot. But on the other hand if other countries get to require that, why not us?
Why don’t you explain what globalism is if it’s your forte?
A government carrying out the will of the people isn’t going to be promoting globalist locusts, that’s for jolly sure.
1000 jobs may not seem like much to our DC insider betters but it’s a big deal out here in flyover country.
You’d just mock, based on your history — that’s why.
Go and learn from the ant.
New York State looks like that everywhere.
Syracuse is a total basketcase. So is Rochester, and Buffalo, and Utica, and Binghamton, and, and, and....
The USA has literally been de-industrialized. Which has been the goal of the left for years. They want it that way.
“Federal and State Tax Revenues
Incrementally higher costs for Carrier products”
Under GW Bush, taxes went down, but Revenues went up. With lower taxes it is worth it to more people to get into or stay in the game - so the private sector will/should grow.
Probably higher costs due to making stuff in the USA. Of course if there are tariffs on imports - those will have increased costs too. And there is a cost to losing those jobs too. Gov’t has to take care of more people as they are out of jobs, etc., which raises our taxes.
And the general decay and “malaise” (to use a Reagan term about the Carter years iirc) that joblessness creates. Look at Detroit where all the automakers left and imagine a USA like that. Why would anyone want to go to Detroit (or the USA) to start a company?
I know that the high-tech and white collar stuff will still support a lot of American jobs. But I think the nuts and bolts industries need to make a comeback to give us a more balanced economy.
As with regard to the Carrier “deal” - I would agree that it isn’t the best to be making individual deals with companies (crony capitalism). I’m pretty sure that isn’t Trump’s plan - it will be an all inclusive plan with lower taxes, less restrictive regulations, etc.
Every regulatory requirement has a cost.
You want a minimum wage? - It has a cost.
You want a safe work place? - It has a cost.
You want clean air? - It has a cost.
You want clean water? - It has a cost.
You want to prevent money laundering? - It has a cost.
You want to ...(fill in the blank)...? - It has a cost.
-
You want to avoid all of those costs? - You go somewhere else.
It wasn’t just the left that wanted that. The so called Free Trader Conservatives have no problem with it. It is depressing.
And the taxes go up and up as fewer cows are expected to yield more milk.
It’s a slow burn of the country’s static treasure. Because America did so well in the past, that can go on for a while, but eventually we get the seven emaciated cows of bible imagery and re-feeding them will be a GARGANTUAN task.
You have to decide if you hate unions, regulations and taxes more than you love your country.
Anti business, anti capitalist smoke blowers like you favor the government control of business as do the socialists we are trying to eradicate
But then you can’t complain about the environment.
I used the word ignorance because it directly applies
Government as the representative of the people is a bad thing? Look at that document. “We The People.”
What has happened is that government has been the representative of its own bloated bureaucratic self. And that has doled out the stored treasures of the land to globalists, and taken a portion of that as vigorish.
This has to stop if we are not to Venezuela ourselves, and the rednecks are going to have the political power to GET it to stop.
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