JimofPennsylvan
Platinum Member
- Jun 6, 2007
- 904
- 596
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People in the media are sounding alarms about President Trump's unprecedented Tariff Agenda! The media is really having a field day painting it like a modern civilization ending nuclear war, economically that is, they should just come out and give it an historic name like the Trade War Crushing Recession. I am not negating their prognostication of the huge economic harm that will be brought about by President Trump's trade war you don't have to be brilliant to connect the dots here. America is a consumer based economy and today the economy is largely driven by the spending of the top ten percent of wealthy Americans and if you tank the financial markets like the world is seeing this top ten percent will be significantly less wealthy because they have a lot of their assets in the market and so they will consume less and the economy will subsequently nose dive! The big problem I have is that the heavy weights in our country the politicians, university professors, economists and business leaders who could lead the country to achieve the good goals here and away from a deep recession are not proposing an alternative plan! The globalization model doesn't work countries like ours that have a higher cost of living whose workers need a higher wage to live cannot compete and so America loses a high number of middle class jobs and these jobs remain permanently lost and not only union leaders know this but ordinary Americans know this to and President Trump is just tapping into this. Elites and intellectuals say manufacturing has changed with robotics we no longer need the factory workers of old so stop with the calls to return to having robust manufacturing in America, that isn't true this writer went to college back in the eighties and the world had robotics technology back then, robotics is no game changer, robotics has limitations it is not always cost effective to build robotic assembly lines especially when the assembling involves a lot of small parts, Home Depot and Lowe's have hundreds of power tools for sale and I would be willing to bet few of them are manufactured by robots and the fact that few of them are made in America has to do with the fact that it is more profitable for the corporations that make them to manufacture them outside of America, it is all about the almighty dollar!
What these influential voices need to be doing is to offer President Trump a workable plan to bring back manufacturing that isn't going to cause massive collateral harm with widespread price increases across the board and a dramatically decreased export business from America. Let us take the auto industry, there is many foreign car makers who import into America whose sales volumes in the country don't make economic sense to manufacture their cars in America. These cars to a significant degree are assembled by robotic machines because of the quality delivered and not only does it take a sizeable support staff for such technology such a production process for high end cars have a large engineering staff to identify and work out the bugs in the production of such cars not to mention the significant number of administrative staff needed to run such a plant and the revenue generated from the sales volumes does not reasonably justify building a plant in America. Plus, a plan must be offered that takes into account that the reason that American car manufacturers for a time stopped manufacturing subcompact cars and small cars in America is that it could not do so profitably and as it turned out the American manufactures began producing such cars in Mexica with a dramatically lower wage rate for workers because it could do so profitably; if President Trump essentially stops foreign imports with tariffs what he will wrought is that car companies will stop selling small cars in America and who will be hurt by this, lower income Americans who cannot afford to buy bigger cars. A good plan needs to differentiate between auto parts which take a lot of labor to build and those that don't that car makers manufacture outside of America to increase their profits it can be made outside of America because the labor costs and material costs are dramatically lower. For example, engines and wire harnesses take a lot of labor hours or parts of hours to build them engines have an enormous number of parts valves, camshafts, fuel lines, gaskets, etc. that need to be assembled, wire harnesses encompass a lot of different wires of different lengths that have connectors on the ends that must be assembled. On the other side you have tubes and pipes and tires and wheels, etc. that are largely made by machines that don't take a lot of labor to manufacture.
These considerations and other prudent ones compel good leadership to offer a more fine-tuned plan on tariffs that makes economic sense for America. For instance, exclude the importation of subcompact and small cars and auto parts for such cars from the tariff, exclude cars that don't have a high sales volume in America from the tariff all for the reasons mentioned. For auto parts that are highly labor intensive in their manufacture like engines and wire harnesses no tariffs and for all other auto parts tariffs will be applied. For these cars and these parts where a tariff will be applies start with a ten percent tariff and then in eighteen months increase the tariff by seven and a half percent and in another eighteen months increase it by another seven and a half percent so in three years you end up with a twenty-five percent tariff; the reason for the graduation of the tariffs is so Washington isn't really socking it to the American auto consumer it gives the auto makers time to move production to the United States especially for auto parts which are not high labor parts to manufacture where transferring production to the U.S. when factoring in the savings in shipping costs, the part cost increase will only be a modest amount like ten percent.
What will be a real tragedy about this whole Tariff Ordeal is if President Trump settles on Plan "C" where he negotiates with all these foreign countries to lower their tariffs on American goods coming into their country in exchange for President Trump lowering America's tariffs on their goods accordingly because such an outcome will not prevail much longer than the four remaining year of the Trump administration because these foreign countries are only making this deal because they know President Trump's make-up is he will hurt them severely even if it means hurting the American people severely and it is almost a certainty that a future American President won't be able to do that because his or her political base would not stand behind that President long-term they would not endure the pain, President Trump's base would stay the course! Let America's collective leadership take this opportunity to chart a different course on the Globalization economic model that works for big business executives and these big businesses wealthy stockholders but not for the ordinary Americans who are deprived of good middle class jobs because manufacturing takes place on products sold in America outside of America and not in America by them!
What these influential voices need to be doing is to offer President Trump a workable plan to bring back manufacturing that isn't going to cause massive collateral harm with widespread price increases across the board and a dramatically decreased export business from America. Let us take the auto industry, there is many foreign car makers who import into America whose sales volumes in the country don't make economic sense to manufacture their cars in America. These cars to a significant degree are assembled by robotic machines because of the quality delivered and not only does it take a sizeable support staff for such technology such a production process for high end cars have a large engineering staff to identify and work out the bugs in the production of such cars not to mention the significant number of administrative staff needed to run such a plant and the revenue generated from the sales volumes does not reasonably justify building a plant in America. Plus, a plan must be offered that takes into account that the reason that American car manufacturers for a time stopped manufacturing subcompact cars and small cars in America is that it could not do so profitably and as it turned out the American manufactures began producing such cars in Mexica with a dramatically lower wage rate for workers because it could do so profitably; if President Trump essentially stops foreign imports with tariffs what he will wrought is that car companies will stop selling small cars in America and who will be hurt by this, lower income Americans who cannot afford to buy bigger cars. A good plan needs to differentiate between auto parts which take a lot of labor to build and those that don't that car makers manufacture outside of America to increase their profits it can be made outside of America because the labor costs and material costs are dramatically lower. For example, engines and wire harnesses take a lot of labor hours or parts of hours to build them engines have an enormous number of parts valves, camshafts, fuel lines, gaskets, etc. that need to be assembled, wire harnesses encompass a lot of different wires of different lengths that have connectors on the ends that must be assembled. On the other side you have tubes and pipes and tires and wheels, etc. that are largely made by machines that don't take a lot of labor to manufacture.
These considerations and other prudent ones compel good leadership to offer a more fine-tuned plan on tariffs that makes economic sense for America. For instance, exclude the importation of subcompact and small cars and auto parts for such cars from the tariff, exclude cars that don't have a high sales volume in America from the tariff all for the reasons mentioned. For auto parts that are highly labor intensive in their manufacture like engines and wire harnesses no tariffs and for all other auto parts tariffs will be applied. For these cars and these parts where a tariff will be applies start with a ten percent tariff and then in eighteen months increase the tariff by seven and a half percent and in another eighteen months increase it by another seven and a half percent so in three years you end up with a twenty-five percent tariff; the reason for the graduation of the tariffs is so Washington isn't really socking it to the American auto consumer it gives the auto makers time to move production to the United States especially for auto parts which are not high labor parts to manufacture where transferring production to the U.S. when factoring in the savings in shipping costs, the part cost increase will only be a modest amount like ten percent.
What will be a real tragedy about this whole Tariff Ordeal is if President Trump settles on Plan "C" where he negotiates with all these foreign countries to lower their tariffs on American goods coming into their country in exchange for President Trump lowering America's tariffs on their goods accordingly because such an outcome will not prevail much longer than the four remaining year of the Trump administration because these foreign countries are only making this deal because they know President Trump's make-up is he will hurt them severely even if it means hurting the American people severely and it is almost a certainty that a future American President won't be able to do that because his or her political base would not stand behind that President long-term they would not endure the pain, President Trump's base would stay the course! Let America's collective leadership take this opportunity to chart a different course on the Globalization economic model that works for big business executives and these big businesses wealthy stockholders but not for the ordinary Americans who are deprived of good middle class jobs because manufacturing takes place on products sold in America outside of America and not in America by them!
