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Trump was the first president in my lifetime to even admit gutting our manufacturing base is a problem. Neither Democrats nor establishment Republicans did anyt

by User23 6y ago

Trump was the first president in my lifetime to even admit gutting our manufacturing base is a problem. Neither Democrats nor establishment Republicans did anything but line up for their shockingly paltry share of the loot while mouthing platitudes about efficiency.

hedora 6y ago
True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries. He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  He ended up reversing the steady gain we've had in manufacturing jobs since 2010, albeit indirectly, because he botched the response to covid. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The argument against his covid response was in not using more aggressive lockdowns. Which is the thing that increases unemployment. You seem to be arguing that more lockdowns, which increase unemployment in the short term, would have reduced unemployment in the short term (i.e. the period measured in that data).
    - cycrutchfield 6y ago
      If you have a more aggressive lockdown, you can control the disease instead of letting it rage unabated for months. Trump’s covid response has been an unmitigated disaster for businesses.
    - appleflaxen 6y ago
      uniform lockdowns that were widely enforced for 2 weeks and then followed by masks, social distancing, and hand washing would have been more effective, and harmed the economy less.
      - klipt 6y ago
        But that will never work if your population thinks even wearing masks is "oppressive"
    - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
      More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective. Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful. Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental. https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budg...
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective. This is what Australia did. Except that some of the measures they used may have been unconstitutional in the US, and Australia is an island. The US has 4500 miles of porous borders with other countries. And covid spreads asymptomatically, so the only way to get to where Australia is now is to get the number of cases down to basically zero. Which you can't do if you get 40 more from Mexico every week. Notice that Australia is basically the only country that has managed to succeed with this; western Europe is doing little better than the US. > Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental. This is fake news. The budget cuts were proposed (as a starting point for budget negotiations with Congress) but never actually enacted: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coronavirus-claims/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coron... > Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful. For that you can thank CNN. They were writing a national story every time Trump would appear on camera without a mask, even if he was giving a speech to a camera with no audience or was in a room with entirely people being covid tested every day. This predictably led to Trump supporters defending him and it becoming a partisan issue. It also didn't help that the CDC was disparaging mask use early on, ostensibly in order to preserve PPE for medical professionals, which gave everybody plenty of ammunition to fight about it once CNN had made it partisan for no good reason.
        omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        40 people coming from Mexico is highly unlikely to lead to 230,000 US cases/day. It may be inaccurate news, but calling it fake is needlessly hyperbolic. The contention isn't that overall funding was cut, it's that certain groups within the CDC saw significant cuts, and those cuts reduced readiness. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21C3N5 https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21C3N5 Regardless of whether Trump's missteps were politicized, they were still missteps. Doubling down on something after someone calls you out doesn't make them responsible for your actions.
- disown 6y ago
  > True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries. To be fair, Trump has been saying that since the 80s... Of course that didn't stop him from manufacturing in china himself. The guy talks the talk but rarely walks the walk. > He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president. And that's why he lost. But boy did he make israel safe. How many arab states did he force into recognizing israel? 4 or 5? Trump's achievements were making israel great again and forcing mexico to extend intellectual property rights by a few years so that he can selling his "Trump" name in mexico for a few more years? Not that things are going to get any better with biden. But then again, it's naive to think the president hold any true power. The power are held by those behind the scenes. Politicians nowadays are entertainers to keep the populace distracted. Presidents come and go, but the powerful remain.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president. Come on now. Say what you will about the effect of the tax changes on inequality, they're clearly designed to make it more attractive to do business in the US, e.g. lower corporate rates and allowing capital expenditures to be deducted immediately rather than amortized over a period of years. It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China.
  - jfim 6y ago
    > It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China. It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing. A properly executed initiative to increase US-based manufacturing would address all of the factors necessary to restart manufacturing: - Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries - A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them - A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time. - A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward - A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe? - Tariffs to protect newly formed manufacturing businesses, but only in conjunction with all of the above This is what a solid plan for restarting US manufacturing would look like.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing. If you look at the actual outcome, it was that China devalued their currency or otherwise lowered prices to eat the tariffs, because their nightmare is manufacturing getting a foothold anywhere else, whether it's India or the US. Which is a win for the US because we have China paying us billions of dollars in tariffs without paying significantly higher prices for goods. That doesn't help US manufacturing directly, but it gives the US a lot of leverage in trade negotiations because now China wants that situation to stop happening. And in the meantime the money can be used for tax cuts or subsidies to US businesses. We could also just raise the tariffs more, for as long as China decides they want to keep paying them instead of letting them push manufacturing out of China. > Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries Tax cuts and subsidies are equivalent. And it's not clear why targeting specific industries is useful rather than giving the same incentives across all industries. > A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them Address them how? With more subsidies, which is really just equivalent to tax cuts again? This is the sort of thing markets are better at than governments. > A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time. This is certainly a problem, but it seems to imply the opposite of your other proposed solutions. You would then not want to target specific segments but rather have broad incentives to engage in all different kinds of business activity, i.e. general tax cuts. > A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward This seems like something you need Democrats to do rather than something you need Trump to do. > A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe? What does this even mean? Countries don't need to differentiate like this. How is it even differentiation when three of the four countries you listed are using the same one?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- EricE 6y ago
  Oh really? I'm sure it's just a coincidence that after getting repeatedly browbeat Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil? That's just one example. I guess we will know for sure - if they slow or reverse (especially in India) under Beijing Biden that will be confirmation Trump was successful at least at moving manufacturing away from China. It was a start. I don't expect it to continue with the establishment Democrats and Republicans back in charge. Yippie.
  - hpkuarg 6y ago
    > Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil Increased production in India and Brazil don't do anything for the loss of U.S. manufacturing.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I agree and that was one of the few things I liked about him, but you know it's all BS when he doesn't support unions. Plus everything else about him is just heinous and basically a ruse to just get people to like him and stroke his ego.

by User23 6y ago

hedora 6y ago

True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries. He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
He ended up reversing the steady gain we've had in manufacturing jobs since 2010, albeit indirectly, because he botched the response to covid. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  The argument against his covid response was in not using more aggressive lockdowns. Which is the thing that increases unemployment. You seem to be arguing that more lockdowns, which increase unemployment in the short term, would have reduced unemployment in the short term (i.e. the period measured in that data).
  - cycrutchfield 6y ago
    If you have a more aggressive lockdown, you can control the disease instead of letting it rage unabated for months. Trump’s covid response has been an unmitigated disaster for businesses.
  - appleflaxen 6y ago
    uniform lockdowns that were widely enforced for 2 weeks and then followed by masks, social distancing, and hand washing would have been more effective, and harmed the economy less.
    - klipt 6y ago
      But that will never work if your population thinks even wearing masks is "oppressive"
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective. Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful. Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental. https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budget-cuts-us-trump https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budg...
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > More aggressive lockdowns initially could have limited the initial spread, and from there reasonable precautions could have been effective. This is what Australia did. Except that some of the measures they used may have been unconstitutional in the US, and Australia is an island. The US has 4500 miles of porous borders with other countries. And covid spreads asymptomatically, so the only way to get to where Australia is now is to get the number of cases down to basically zero. Which you can't do if you get 40 more from Mexico every week. Notice that Australia is basically the only country that has managed to succeed with this; western Europe is doing little better than the US. > Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental. This is fake news. The budget cuts were proposed (as a starting point for budget negotiations with Congress) but never actually enacted: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coronavirus-claims/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/democrats-misleading-coron... > Disparaging mask use is also generally considered to be harmful. For that you can thank CNN. They were writing a national story every time Trump would appear on camera without a mask, even if he was giving a speech to a camera with no audience or was in a room with entirely people being covid tested every day. This predictably led to Trump supporters defending him and it becoming a partisan issue. It also didn't help that the CDC was disparaging mask use early on, ostensibly in order to preserve PPE for medical professionals, which gave everybody plenty of ammunition to fight about it once CNN had made it partisan for no good reason.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
        40 people coming from Mexico is highly unlikely to lead to 230,000 US cases/day. It may be inaccurate news, but calling it fake is needlessly hyperbolic. The contention isn't that overall funding was cut, it's that certain groups within the CDC saw significant cuts, and those cuts reduced readiness. https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21C3N5 https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21C3N5 Regardless of whether Trump's missteps were politicized, they were still missteps. Doubling down on something after someone calls you out doesn't make them responsible for your actions.
disown 6y ago
> True, but he said he said that simply because Bernie did, and it played well against Hillary in the primaries. To be fair, Trump has been saying that since the 80s... Of course that didn't stop him from manufacturing in china himself. The guy talks the talk but rarely walks the walk. > He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president. And that's why he lost. But boy did he make israel safe. How many arab states did he force into recognizing israel? 4 or 5? Trump's achievements were making israel great again and forcing mexico to extend intellectual property rights by a few years so that he can selling his "Trump" name in mexico for a few more years? Not that things are going to get any better with biden. But then again, it's naive to think the president hold any true power. The power are held by those behind the scenes. Politicians nowadays are entertainers to keep the populace distracted. Presidents come and go, but the powerful remain.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president. Come on now. Say what you will about the effect of the tax changes on inequality, they're clearly designed to make it more attractive to do business in the US, e.g. lower corporate rates and allowing capital expenditures to be deducted immediately rather than amortized over a period of years. It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China.
- jfim 6y ago
  > It's hard to argue that tariffs on goods from China don't make it less attractive to buy goods from China. It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing. A properly executed initiative to increase US-based manufacturing would address all of the factors necessary to restart manufacturing: - Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries - A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them - A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time. - A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward - A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe? - Tariffs to protect newly formed manufacturing businesses, but only in conjunction with all of the above This is what a solid plan for restarting US manufacturing would look like.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > It's true that tariffs will make buying goods from China less appealing, but if you look at the outcome, it's not really a win. Consumers are paying more for the same goods, companies are scrambling to move their production to India and Malaysia, and there's not a significant increase in US manufacturing. If you look at the actual outcome, it was that China devalued their currency or otherwise lowered prices to eat the tariffs, because their nightmare is manufacturing getting a foothold anywhere else, whether it's India or the US. Which is a win for the US because we have China paying us billions of dollars in tariffs without paying significantly higher prices for goods. That doesn't help US manufacturing directly, but it gives the US a lot of leverage in trade negotiations because now China wants that situation to stop happening. And in the meantime the money can be used for tax cuts or subsidies to US businesses. We could also just raise the tariffs more, for as long as China decides they want to keep paying them instead of letting them push manufacturing out of China. > Not only tax cuts, but subsidies and investment aimed at increasing manufacturing in specific industries Tax cuts and subsidies are equivalent. And it's not clear why targeting specific industries is useful rather than giving the same incentives across all industries. > A concerted program to identify labor and skills shortages, and address them Address them how? With more subsidies, which is really just equivalent to tax cuts again? This is the sort of thing markets are better at than governments. > A program to identify the missing parts of manufacturing ecosystems and address them. One reason why electronics are made in China is not only cheap labor, but access to a whole ecosystem of suppliers and other manufacturers. Need one million PCBs assembled, plastic casings made, half a million cardboard boxes printed, instruction manuals printed and bound, well, there's a whole ecosystem of partners ready to get all of these things done with the capacity to have a relatively short turnaround time. This is certainly a problem, but it seems to imply the opposite of your other proposed solutions. You would then not want to target specific segments but rather have broad incentives to engage in all different kinds of business activity, i.e. general tax cuts. > A clear bipartisan commitment that this is something that won't get deprioritized or axed one or two administrations later, but something that is of national interest and that both parties agree to push forward This seems like something you need Democrats to do rather than something you need Trump to do. > A national focus on a key differentiator from other countries' manufacturing. China has cheap, Japan, Switzerland, and Germany have good, the US has big and sturdy maybe? What does this even mean? Countries don't need to differentiate like this. How is it even differentiation when three of the four countries you listed are using the same one?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
EricE 6y ago
Oh really? I'm sure it's just a coincidence that after getting repeatedly browbeat Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil? That's just one example. I guess we will know for sure - if they slow or reverse (especially in India) under Beijing Biden that will be confirmation Trump was successful at least at moving manufacturing away from China. It was a start. I don't expect it to continue with the establishment Democrats and Republicans back in charge. Yippie.
- hpkuarg 6y ago
  > Apple dramatically ramped up iPhone production in India and Brazil Increased production in India and Brazil don't do anything for the loss of U.S. manufacturing.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

I agree and that was one of the few things I liked about him, but you know it's all BS when he doesn't support unions. Plus everything else about him is just heinous and basically a ruse to just get people to like him and stroke his ego.