From Barron’s, in screenshots.
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I am so sorry to hear how this has impacted your life.
This is the type of story that needs to be told, retold and spread far and wide.
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Yep, that’s been our experience as an importer of manufactured goods from abroad. Tariff fans don’t understand that tariffs would have to hit triple digits in a lot of products verticals to even start a discussion that might lead to onshoring of previously lost manufacturing (and that’s only if products can’t slip through under different classifications). The labor differentials between China/US are too great, and in some areas, the expertise in the US doesn’t even exist broadly anymore (most plastics production). These tariffs are really just cutting profitability and forcing up costs on the supply chain.
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They just assume they are going up somewhere else.
The tariffs on Chinese goods are not going to bite until the dollar drops in value. The rise in the dollar and fall in the yuan since the tariffs were announced pretty much offset the tariffs.
The US dollar index was around 86.00 when tariffs were announced. The dollar index is now at 98.88.
That has more than offset the cost of tariffs, especially when you also factor in the yuan falling in value.
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Trump’s a putz … has no serious sense of vision …parrot simplistic crap that is fed to him … pound the table to demand pointless support fo outmoded technology / industries.
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I am long retired, but in 1979 I had been in manufacturing for over a decade and could easily see the future of it was all downhill from that point in time. Jobs were moving overseas so fast and companies even expected current employees to go to the new plant and train folks just to keep from losing a paycheck for a few more months.
From Reagan onwards there has been little chance for a revival of major manufacturing coming back to the US. For the most part, manufacturing jobs that employed the majority of assembly line workers are no longer done by human hands. Automation has removed those jobs and we aren’t ever going to see them come back in numbers that might make a difference.
To make matters worse the education system has become close to a joke, more like a day care center than teaching people to think and live. The bar has become so low, that innovators are few and far between. It is not surprising that people without leadership skills or understanding of history have fallen under the spell of the naked emperor selling majikal snake oil.
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BTW - anyone wanna bet that NAM’s statement of praise was not issued from the WH? 
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Your story gives the lie to these fabricated claims of a mfg “boom”.
These fictions are deliberately created and floated. People want to believe them and so they stick and are accepted as fact by people, except those, like you, who know the reality.
The “booming economy” is another myth. Household debt is at a record high. That shows that families are financing daily living with credit cards. Their paychecks aren’t sustaining them. That can only continue for so long before the chickens come home to roost.
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They should be doing that. That said, it must be noted that showing the lie in these myths is so hard because we want to believe them. That’s Rumor and Urban Myth 101.
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Paging Susan Collins.
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And they say Irony is dead…
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And our biggest manufacturer, Boeing, is beset by huge problems of its own making.
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That’s something to keep in mind as we glory in Rmoney making one uncomfortable vote to convict the dotard on abuse of power but no on obstruction of congress. One of the places he made most of his money was Bain Capital and that org. specialized in buying American factories, stripping them of assets and then offshoring them. That is the Mitts legacy. He made his fortune on the backs of American workers who were laid off and American manufacturing capacity as that was shipped out of the country. Even Mr. Bus was probably made in a factory in China.
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Mr. Boy. That’s kind of whimsically amusing too. But more important, it’s a great piece.
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In the mid 1970s I worked in a factory in NE Ohio that made side panels and doors for railroad freight cars. The equipment was antiquated, all the overhead presses predated OSHA safety regulations, and injuries were frequent.
And even though the company controlled most of the patents in the industry, a series of corporate buyouts that came before me created massive debt and prompted management to send more work to non-union subcontractors, first in the South, and then overseas.
The steel mills in my area pursued a similar path of non investment in new technologies; many of them were originally pig iron mills dating from the 1800s and were modernized on the cheap. Many of them still relied on the obsolete open-hearth technology.
During that time, we heard reports that many factories in Japan, unlike my employer, were more focused on innovation and constantly upgrading and replacing their equipment. A higher proportion of their profits went back into improving production and productivity, and less to shareholder profits. We heard stories that many of them typically replaced all their technology every five years in an effort to remain competitive.
There was a notable exception in my area, RMI, or Reactive Metals Industries, a company that made specialty steels and titanium alloys for aircraft and other technical uses. I don’t know if they are still around or viable.
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Yes, and back then we were told that the service economy was our future, and that we did not need to manufacture things here.
By shipping jobs overseas we were promised cheaper goods. But the outsourcing eliminated paying customers for those goods.
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There’s a thin line between underinvestment and looting. And all of that debt, well, somebody got the cash that it produced. (And somebody else got the fees for running the deals.)
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Textbook case of self-destructive business behavior. The CEO was charged with raising the stock price. He did, but did so by driving product out the door before it was safe for the public to use. Poor leadership is the direct cause of those dead in their plane crashes. This has been documented in several business pubs. Engineers’ warnings were ignored.
I thought these cases were studied in business schools. I was naïve.
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These cases are studied in business schools. But at least some of the students take away a different lesson: it’s fine to tank the company as long as you maximize your own net worth.
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