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Here’s What Trump Doesn’t Get About American Manufacturing
Fortune ^ | 2017-01-14 | Bill George

Posted on 01/14/2017 7:14:50 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

If the Roman emperors ruled by edict, President-elect Donald Trump appears poised to rule by tweet. Even before taking office, Trump has discovered he can move the world’s largest global corporations with simple, 140-character tweets. And though his aggressive approach is winning politically, good politics doesn’t necessarily mean good economics.

Voters see Trump fulfilling his campaign promises to close America’s borders and bring jobs back home. He is using the bully pulpit to stand up for workers by taking on the most powerful American companies, including Ford (F, +0.32%), General Motors (GM, -0.45%), Toyota (TM, +0.14%), Boeing (BA, +0.34%), Lockheed Martin (LMT, +0.76%), and United Technologies (UTX, -0.54%)/Carrier.

Thus far, no CEOs have had the courage to stand up to Trump. General Motors CEO Mary Barra has said the company’s small-car production will remain in Mexico, but it could only be a matter of time before she’s forced to change course. Trump’s sudden tweets likely worry many CEOs who fear they may be his next target. Right now, most have just tried to stay out of his way. Some, like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne, have put forth peace offerings to invest more in the U.S.

(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; manufacturing; trumpeconomy; trumptransition
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To: ConservativeMind
We are not going to lose the income tax. A uniform tariff to replace the income tax for revenue would be far and away the best solution. It is what the Founders envisaged. A tariff on top of the income tax is just another constantly revised and raised honey pot for legislators and, of course, raises the prices of everything to the consumers.
61 posted on 01/15/2017 4:53:16 AM PST by arthurus
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To: central_va

You should read some Economics.You are living in an Economic leftist dream world.


62 posted on 01/15/2017 4:54:49 AM PST by arthurus
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To: RegulatorCountry
Read some Economics. Henry Hazlitt is a good introduction to the subject. He is succinct and thorough. Economics in One Lesson is a short book. If you read it and understand it- it is written in plain English, not jargon- you will not be able to avoid thinking things through.
63 posted on 01/15/2017 4:57:48 AM PST by arthurus
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To: arthurus

Ad hominem and citing a very basic, stripped down, ideologically-driven set of crib notes for economic dummies is not persuasive to me. I understand economics well enough to understand whether or not underlying statistics support a given contention, or not. I challenged you to cite statistics to support your contention that tariffs caused the Great Depression. This I note you have not done.


64 posted on 01/15/2017 5:04:30 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Fortune is a dying liberal rag


65 posted on 01/15/2017 5:06:36 AM PST by bert (K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;WASP .... Macroagression melts snowflakes)
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To: central_va

“It takes 30 man-hours to build a car.”

...the the rest of the cost is materials? Somehow I doubt they pay $10/lb. for steel, glass, aluminum, copper and plastic.


66 posted on 01/15/2017 5:14:35 AM PST by BobL (In Honor of the NeverTrumpers, I declare myself as FR's first 'Imitation NeverTrumper')
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To: RegulatorCountry

Liberals are Free Traders in the way that Bruce Jenner is a female. Liberals use the term prolifically but what they call ‘free trade’ is more akin to what the high school history books of 70 years ago, back when schools taught history, called Mercantilism. NAFTA and the Pacific Trade Agreement are NOT free trade. They are managed trade complete with government and quasi government councils and agencies to carefully manage and control every aspect of trade to benefit certain corporations and conglomerates and, of course, politicians. Calling a cat a coyote does not make it a canine.


67 posted on 01/15/2017 5:21:15 AM PST by arthurus
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To: arthurus

Well, thank you, I’m rather confused as to why you’ve posted this, since I agree. But, what does this have to do with the your contention in question, that the Great Depression was caused by tariffs?


68 posted on 01/15/2017 5:24:46 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

unknown and unmentioned is what actually went on in the Trump CEO meetings.

What actually happened was Trump asked the question “ How can my administration be of help to your business to get things on track and make jobs?


69 posted on 01/15/2017 5:26:16 AM PST by bert (K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;WASP .... Macroagression melts snowflakes)
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To: RegulatorCountry
You may understand Economics insofar as you have read about it in school. If you have an MBA you have probably had one survey course in the subject which taught no economics and extolled Keynes as the one who finally got it right. I have read and reread Hazlitt, Von Mises, Adam Smith, Hayek, Ricardo, etc., all of them including Keynes. For the lay person who has not the time for all that but desires to learn how to follow a claim and and a putative economic argument, one should read H Hazlitt Economics in One Lesson. It is a short book written in plain English. One who reads it will not blindly accept what a politician says ever again because one will have learned to automatically think through the secondary and tertiary effects of a utopian assertion.
70 posted on 01/15/2017 5:28:05 AM PST by arthurus
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To: Trump Girl Kit Cat

Paying more will bother people...Trump’s people. There are also plenty of people where higher prices means they retire at 57 years old, rather than 56.5 - not exactly torture...they may not care.

The rest of what you say I TOTALLY AGREE WITH. I grew up working on cars (pretty much everything short of transmission rebuilds), doing electrical repairs, plumbing repairs, and some AC repairs - my kids can do all that, but no thanks to our education system. Americans need to be doing that work again. The people that SHOULD be doing that work, that used to do that work, now go to college for useless degrees - we need to stop funding those degrees - if they want a degree in Monocouque-Feminist Studies, or something like that, let them spend 5 years in a garage saving up their money to pay themselves for it.

Regarding the doubling of prices - we really don’t know what will happen as production is moved back here. I do think for some businesses the labor/regulatory environment in SO BAD that some prices will double if nothing is done about it - but Trump understands the same, and his people certainly do too - and there’s a ton of stuff Trump will do, even without Congress doing a thing...so we’ll never do that experiment (trade barriers only), thankfully.


71 posted on 01/15/2017 5:28:34 AM PST by BobL (In Honor of the NeverTrumpers, I declare myself as FR's first 'Imitation NeverTrumper')
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To: arthurus

Bluster and filibuster does not hide the fact that you apparently cannot support your contention, that the Great Depression was caused by tariffs. Please demonstrate this with facts, not demanding that I read Economics For Dummies. At this juncture, the “dummy” looks to be you. Maybe you’d care to correct this misapprehension?


72 posted on 01/15/2017 5:31:10 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: bert

He said “start onshoring production or I will slap a tariff on your asses.”


73 posted on 01/15/2017 5:31:33 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va

In any case, there is NO such thing as free trade. There is, what I prefer to call, cost/benefit trade. We’ve been getting screwed. Time to negotiate some better deals.


74 posted on 01/15/2017 5:34:46 AM PST by mewzilla (I'll vote for the first guy who promises to mail in his SOTU addresses.)
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To: RegulatorCountry

The Great Depression was not totally caused by tariffs. The Crash was triggered by the Trade War set off by Smoot Hawley and gave FDR excuses to make it much worse, putting in place controls that further stifled economic activity. The Crash was not the Depression and did not cause it. We have had crashes that were not followed by hard times and crashes that were. The Depression did not end with the War contrary to general belief. The War converted a high unemployment depression into a full employment depression but it remained a Depression all the same. People were not materially any better off than in the preWar era. Many still did not get enough to eat. The Depression didn’t really end until Ike removed most of the FDR chains from the economy and set off the 50s expansion and prosperity. The postwar recession of the late forties and into the early fifties was a continuation of the Depression.


75 posted on 01/15/2017 5:36:57 AM PST by arthurus
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To: BobL

The retail price of a car(or any durable good) includes: Engineering, management,profit,taxes, materials,overhead transportation,energy,marketing and labor. All of that is folded into the sticker price. On average the labor bill is 8% for US made cars. That figure can be used for a lion share of US made durable goods. The labor to make a UNION made $30,000 passenger car is around $2,400 USD per car. Think of a car factory as a huge scale garage.


76 posted on 01/15/2017 5:37:14 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: RegulatorCountry

Read the book and then we can talk. It will only take a few hours.


77 posted on 01/15/2017 5:38:24 AM PST by arthurus
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To: cynwoody

Was George Washington evil when he signed the first tariff act? What is evil are globalist Free Traitors™. They should all be burned at the stake.


78 posted on 01/15/2017 5:38:51 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: arthurus

Cite supporting statistics for your contention, that the Great Depression was caused by tariffs. I am not here to do your homework for you.


79 posted on 01/15/2017 5:40:26 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry

The only way to cure anyone suffering from Free Traitor-itis would be to round them up into re education camps and teach them actual US history. Those people are totally brainwashed, more so than ISIS radicals.


80 posted on 01/15/2017 5:42:31 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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