"We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements and cheat in every way imaginable, and our politicians did nothing about it. Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result.
I have visited cities and towns across this country where one-third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years.
The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts all the blame on free trade (which I actually think is a bad thing). It isn't. A large part of that problem is Automation. Manufacturing jobs have been disappearing WORLD WIDE, not just in the United States.
But FuckingNaziTrump blames brown people and you eat that shit up. .
What the **** is wrong with you?
YOu make a valid point about automation, which I am completely prepared to answer, and then you go full godwin.
Automation is certainly part of the problem.
BUT so is "Free Trade".
Germany has TWICE the percentage of manufacturing we do in their workforce. So there are a lot of jobs that we are missing out on, not because of automation, but because of bad trade policy.
When you dismiss good people who have a Just Grievance about their interests being greatly harmed, when you go futher than dismissing them to calling the racist and ******* nazis,
you are being a complete asshole.
Today, we import nearly $800 billion more in goods than we export. We can’t continue to do that.
Well, yeah, we kind of can. 800 Billion might sound like a lot, but it's less than 5% of the GDP. .[/QUOTE]
The difference between a recession and a booming economy is less than 5% of GDP.
You are talking millions, no tens of millions of lives being seriously harmed by economic woes, with real suffering and real loss.
Have you ever been to the Rust Belt?
This is not some natural disaster, it’s a political and politician-made disaster. Very simple.
And it can be corrected and we can correct it fast when we have people with the right thinking. Right up here. It is the consequence…
It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism."
Uh, guy, a lot of the disaster is us. If US Manufacturing has fallen behind, it is largely the fault of US manufacturers and US Consumers. .[/QUOTE]
1. US consumers are not responsible for Trade Policy or Corporate decisions. Blaming them is bullshit.
2. Corporate leadership might be part of the problem. But we haven't addressed their incompetence, all we've done is allow them to hide the cost of their incompetence from their shareholders with the profits from cheap Third World labor.
.
I've worked in manufacturing for the last 20 years. Do you know who I see out in the plants? Not the poor white guys you think are so put upon. Nope. Mostly I see Hispanic and Asian women. .
THat's funny. If you saw mostly white guys, you would assume discrimination in hiring. But flip it, and you assume something is wrong with the "poor white guys".
.
The thing was, US Manufacturers are the ones who didn't keep up with innovation and efficiency. So not surprisingly, they lost out tothose who did. Protecting them from competition isn't going to fix that..
I call bullshit. This is about cheap labor, lax regulations, and unfair trade.
******* China is not more innovative or efficient than US.
.
The other part of the problem is the US Consumer himself. Given a choice between a Toyota and a Ford, he chooses a Toyota because a Toyota is quality and a Ford is "Fix Or Repair Daily" (And, yes, I heard that joke when I was 10. THAT'S how long theres been a problem.)
1. Then why the **** haven't we done something about it? The idea was that harsh competition would force improvements in quality from US manufacturers and thus we would become competitive again.
That policy has failed.
And the incompetent CEO's have covered their asses with outsourcing. So, tell me again why you are on their side?
2. Consumers don't set Trade or Industrial policy. This is not on them. This is a matter for policy. The previous policy has failed and we need a new one, yesterday.