This is an excellent article, but there’s one omission, and that is the enormous role that AI is going to play and complete obliteration of the manufacturing sector which will be accelerated by both administrations.
Delusional. How exactly is AI going to negatively automate everything? Do you have literally any experience with automation? Seriously, people saying this bullshit are completely delusional.
"There’s a certain kind of elite liberal who really believes the grocery store makes food."
That is very hard to believe. Can you name any examples? I think you are imagining people that don't actually exist.
"We think food comes from the grocery store, electricity comes from the wall, and medicine comes from CVS."
Are you a young child? Do you know any adults who believe that?
"Because we’ve stopped being useful. We don’t make the stuff. We don’t supply the tools. We don’t offer the capacity. All we offer is market access, military muscle, and financial systems."
Software is amazingly useful, and your failure to mention it shows remarkable ignorance. If you think software isn't useful, try to spend a week without using any.
There was a time when the label, 'Made in Japan' was a joke. Today that label is the hallmark of cutting-edge technology and of highest quality.
Then there was 'Made in Korea', 'Made in Mexico' and "Made in Taiwan'.
Today, the new hallmark of technology and quality is 'Made in PRC'. That's China.
Now, I'm old enough to remember when 'Made in USA' meant that it was the best that money could buy. That was Hewlett-Packard desk-top programmable calculators - just as personal computers were emerging. And Texas Instruments. Oh, and did we love the Apollo moon landings!
But that was a couple of generations ago, and I'm struggling to think of something genuinely 'Made in USA', and not just repackaged and rebranded Vietnamese manufactured goods. And I'm not too sure that starving people into working in Bezos factories is the best way forward. Nor banning books.
But then I'm European - living in Gdansk, Poland - so I'm open to the idea that I'm biased . . .
Dear Readers of Mr. Trent's very accurate and strongly written argument. For those interested in some detail, my book from 1998 and 2000, SURRENDER, HOW THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION COMPLETED THE REAGAN REVOLUTION goes into detail about how under Bill Clinton, the Democrats completely surrendered to Neo-liberalism --- even as Reagan style Neo-liberalism was FAILING to deliver the goods ---
and I believe that his link, one can read the book for free:
Wouldn’t it be great if everything you wish to consume was produced locally, grown locally, drilled and mined locally, and manufactured locally? As a concept this makes you feel great, but it’s totally unrealistic in the modern world. Taken to the extreme, you’d want to have a personal oil well on the corner of your property, a mine where you dig up what you need from the ground, a field where you grow and harvest everything you eat, and a little factory where you make all of your tools and consumer products. As a result you have to be an oil driller, a farmer and a manufacturer of everything from cars to pharmaceuticals to toys for the kids. Those are basically the constraints that existed for humans 10,000 years ago - and it really sucked.
We live in a modern world with differentiated resource bases and labor forces and mankind has thrived this way, compared to how it was for human beings thousands of years ago.
Go ahead and blame “neoliberals” and “globalists”, but what you’re railing against is modernity itself.
The US is the second largest manufacture in the world. I wonder why this author showed it as percent of GDP??? Maybe it’s because this article is a load of MAGA propaganda.
Well said. Another great focus on the failure of neoliberalism that has been driven by the Democrat Party.
I would like to add some questions/issues about U.S. manufacturing.
I don't think the priority of bringing manufacturing back to the USA is about quality. It is about jobs. The reason we exported manufacturing was cheaper labor. One part of a solution could be to require wages in US companies that manufacture outside the USA to be commensurate to wages in the USA.
And how can we influence other countries? With trade. Our trade with other countries can include a requirement in labor standards that in addition to safety and working conditions, required workplace democracy - collective bargaining - that is monitored for coercion.
I've heard of your friend Saikat Chakrabarti. I even sent him an email. Never got a reply. What's your name? Why should I trust you when you have nothing to identify yourself but a mysterious screen name?
This is well written and points to our collective myopia in many areas. And national security will always be a bogeyman on the horizon. However, is there really any such things as a wholly independent nation, one that is completely self sufficient or able to source all of its own resources? Is isolationism really an option anywhere in the world anymore?
I don't understand why this conversation always goes back to free trade agreements. Transnational corporations are more responsible for transferring manufacturing out of this country than any trade or tariff policy. It is simple basic capitalism and free market. Global corporations operate outside of national borders. They place their manufacturing and production wherever the labor is cheaper, wherever the regulations are less restrictive, and wherever they can avoid additional expenses, be it taxes, tariffs or otherwise.
Yes, government could impose more barriers which would make these moves prohibitively expensive, but there is always another nation which will open the door for business no matter the cost.
And what cost is that? We already know some of them - less regulation translates to more pollution, harsher labor conditions, lower pay, less accountability.
We can pretend that it is possible to coerce companies into bringing back these jobs, but is it really likely? As soon as the winds change or some second world country offers less restrictive conditions, these same companies will move again. They have no national allegiance.
I do not have simple answers, and I am not an economic expert. Yet, this seems apparent to me. Even if we did return these jobs to the US would they really be the higher paying manufacturing jobs that advocates say they will? Can any level of tariff offset the $ .25 per hour offered in some third world country elsewhere? or the less onerous or nonexistent environmental regulations?
What is the tide that will raise all boats globally, so that sending jobs elsewhere ceases to be an option? Is it really tariffs or trade restrictions?
Great read explaining the problems and some solutions but low on depth . We here in America don’t do anything big anymore. We need to rebuild our country first and that is going to take time. Can’t build factories because it’s going to take years and the government needs to invest along with private sector to grow. The government needs to run all of our infrastructure related to energy efficiency and let the private sector recover our manufacturing sector. We must have a competent workforce that can deliver the necessary energy for the future jobs. We must think out of the box and get our people to accept the opportunity for future generations
This is some ridiculous use of charts (the y axis scale on the reserve currency chart, the meaningless “percentage of GDP” chart - fun fact, the U.S. is still second in manufacturing output, and the other ignoring of the timing of the when productivity decoupled from wages in order to own the … Democrats).
I don't have stats.. but I believe much of the US growth and expansion has always revolved around immigration
From forced slavery that made us rich with cotton/textiles
To building railroads with cheap immigrants..
To innovation with rocket scientists.... much of the more recent tech boom.. had to do with second generation immigrants..
and what are we doing, ignoring what made us great.. AT EVERY f-ing LEVEL - immigrants.
Nothing so insane as 3rd and 4th generation immigrants telling morons to be afraid of immigrants
This is an excellent article, but there’s one omission, and that is the enormous role that AI is going to play and complete obliteration of the manufacturing sector which will be accelerated by both administrations.
Delusional. How exactly is AI going to negatively automate everything? Do you have literally any experience with automation? Seriously, people saying this bullshit are completely delusional.
It’s called management by algorithm. There are some factories that are 100% automated already.
That cost hundreds of millions of dollars and only work for very specific products.
"There’s a certain kind of elite liberal who really believes the grocery store makes food."
That is very hard to believe. Can you name any examples? I think you are imagining people that don't actually exist.
"We think food comes from the grocery store, electricity comes from the wall, and medicine comes from CVS."
Are you a young child? Do you know any adults who believe that?
"Because we’ve stopped being useful. We don’t make the stuff. We don’t supply the tools. We don’t offer the capacity. All we offer is market access, military muscle, and financial systems."
Software is amazingly useful, and your failure to mention it shows remarkable ignorance. If you think software isn't useful, try to spend a week without using any.
A lot of common sense in this article.
There was a time when the label, 'Made in Japan' was a joke. Today that label is the hallmark of cutting-edge technology and of highest quality.
Then there was 'Made in Korea', 'Made in Mexico' and "Made in Taiwan'.
Today, the new hallmark of technology and quality is 'Made in PRC'. That's China.
Now, I'm old enough to remember when 'Made in USA' meant that it was the best that money could buy. That was Hewlett-Packard desk-top programmable calculators - just as personal computers were emerging. And Texas Instruments. Oh, and did we love the Apollo moon landings!
But that was a couple of generations ago, and I'm struggling to think of something genuinely 'Made in USA', and not just repackaged and rebranded Vietnamese manufactured goods. And I'm not too sure that starving people into working in Bezos factories is the best way forward. Nor banning books.
But then I'm European - living in Gdansk, Poland - so I'm open to the idea that I'm biased . . .
Dear Readers of Mr. Trent's very accurate and strongly written argument. For those interested in some detail, my book from 1998 and 2000, SURRENDER, HOW THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION COMPLETED THE REAGAN REVOLUTION goes into detail about how under Bill Clinton, the Democrats completely surrendered to Neo-liberalism --- even as Reagan style Neo-liberalism was FAILING to deliver the goods ---
and I believe that his link, one can read the book for free:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/23997
Wouldn’t it be great if everything you wish to consume was produced locally, grown locally, drilled and mined locally, and manufactured locally? As a concept this makes you feel great, but it’s totally unrealistic in the modern world. Taken to the extreme, you’d want to have a personal oil well on the corner of your property, a mine where you dig up what you need from the ground, a field where you grow and harvest everything you eat, and a little factory where you make all of your tools and consumer products. As a result you have to be an oil driller, a farmer and a manufacturer of everything from cars to pharmaceuticals to toys for the kids. Those are basically the constraints that existed for humans 10,000 years ago - and it really sucked.
We live in a modern world with differentiated resource bases and labor forces and mankind has thrived this way, compared to how it was for human beings thousands of years ago.
Go ahead and blame “neoliberals” and “globalists”, but what you’re railing against is modernity itself.
The US is the second largest manufacture in the world. I wonder why this author showed it as percent of GDP??? Maybe it’s because this article is a load of MAGA propaganda.
Are you being sarcastic or serious? I can’t tell.
Well said. Another great focus on the failure of neoliberalism that has been driven by the Democrat Party.
I would like to add some questions/issues about U.S. manufacturing.
I don't think the priority of bringing manufacturing back to the USA is about quality. It is about jobs. The reason we exported manufacturing was cheaper labor. One part of a solution could be to require wages in US companies that manufacture outside the USA to be commensurate to wages in the USA.
And how can we influence other countries? With trade. Our trade with other countries can include a requirement in labor standards that in addition to safety and working conditions, required workplace democracy - collective bargaining - that is monitored for coercion.
I've heard of your friend Saikat Chakrabarti. I even sent him an email. Never got a reply. What's your name? Why should I trust you when you have nothing to identify yourself but a mysterious screen name?
Spot on article. Incredibly well said.
This is well written and points to our collective myopia in many areas. And national security will always be a bogeyman on the horizon. However, is there really any such things as a wholly independent nation, one that is completely self sufficient or able to source all of its own resources? Is isolationism really an option anywhere in the world anymore?
I don't understand why this conversation always goes back to free trade agreements. Transnational corporations are more responsible for transferring manufacturing out of this country than any trade or tariff policy. It is simple basic capitalism and free market. Global corporations operate outside of national borders. They place their manufacturing and production wherever the labor is cheaper, wherever the regulations are less restrictive, and wherever they can avoid additional expenses, be it taxes, tariffs or otherwise.
Yes, government could impose more barriers which would make these moves prohibitively expensive, but there is always another nation which will open the door for business no matter the cost.
And what cost is that? We already know some of them - less regulation translates to more pollution, harsher labor conditions, lower pay, less accountability.
We can pretend that it is possible to coerce companies into bringing back these jobs, but is it really likely? As soon as the winds change or some second world country offers less restrictive conditions, these same companies will move again. They have no national allegiance.
I do not have simple answers, and I am not an economic expert. Yet, this seems apparent to me. Even if we did return these jobs to the US would they really be the higher paying manufacturing jobs that advocates say they will? Can any level of tariff offset the $ .25 per hour offered in some third world country elsewhere? or the less onerous or nonexistent environmental regulations?
What is the tide that will raise all boats globally, so that sending jobs elsewhere ceases to be an option? Is it really tariffs or trade restrictions?
Great read explaining the problems and some solutions but low on depth . We here in America don’t do anything big anymore. We need to rebuild our country first and that is going to take time. Can’t build factories because it’s going to take years and the government needs to invest along with private sector to grow. The government needs to run all of our infrastructure related to energy efficiency and let the private sector recover our manufacturing sector. We must have a competent workforce that can deliver the necessary energy for the future jobs. We must think out of the box and get our people to accept the opportunity for future generations
Good piece.
This is some ridiculous use of charts (the y axis scale on the reserve currency chart, the meaningless “percentage of GDP” chart - fun fact, the U.S. is still second in manufacturing output, and the other ignoring of the timing of the when productivity decoupled from wages in order to own the … Democrats).
Unsubscribe and laugh.