I have been giving this a lot of thought and the parallels with brexit are obvious.
Back in the 60s and 70s when I was in school there was a large section of the school population who did very little.
Not through laziness. They treated school as a social event and their comfort was that there would be a job for them when they finished. They wouldnt have a profession but they would have a nice house and a new car every few years. They could take the kids to Spain every year and all in all life would be fine.
Then those jobs started to disappear to countries where folk would work harder for less money.
The jobs that replaced them were lower quality. Zero hours and minimum wage. No job security,no home and everything starts to cost more apart from the stuff coming from China.
And the politicians, on all sides, do not have a solution to this. They cant put it right. SO whichever way these guys vote nothing changes. Their quality of life is on a downward spiral.
But somebody must be at fault and this is where the likes of trump and farage come in. The problem is all those fucking immigrants stealing your homes and jobs and all those lying politicians lining their pockets at your expense. Throw in the experts as well, they only make things worse.
So folk vote for a simplistic loon who claims to have all the answers. Its not trumps fault that their lives are shit but he may have the answers. Ditto brexit.
Of course its all a con.But lets be honest Biden isnt going to sort it out. He may rearrange the deck chairs but the direction of travel is set and radical change is needed. That is more likely to come from smaller countries and not from the UK or the US with an entrenched conservative majority and a poorly educated workforce that society will have no need for.
Trump will come back in a different shape in a few years.
I was trained as a Production Supervisor. Meaning what makes a large business work. I spent some time actually doing the job until I wanted my soul back. So let's look at what it takes to fix the problems you have noted.
Tarrifs are not a bad thing when they are used to even out the playing field. Using Tarrifs for revenge has never been a god idea as the other nation will respond in kind as is what has happened and our economy gets harmed. But if you selectively use tarrifs on things like
1. Patent Infringements
2. Slave Labor
3. Dumping
Then that's not revenge. It's evening up the playing field.
But along with the Tariffs, you also need to use taxing; both breaks and penalties. Let's say that the startup of bringing a product or service home would cost 20% over at first. Originally, the move to overseas was done because the cost was much lower and the transportation were low enough where the company made a 35%+ profit from the move. Good business says shut the US plant down and open the Chinese Factory. The cost of the move did cost them 20%+ at first but it averaged out where there was a 30%+ profit margin over a 5 year period. It's really hard to fault any business that would do that change.
Now, let's look at today. The Cost of the Labor in China has gone up. The cost of natural resources has gone up. And, most importantly, the cost of transportation has gone way up. If you were to remove the cost of startup in the United States for the same Product, it would average out to be about the same due to the cost of shipping on that Toaster being extremely less. The problem is, the 20%+ startup cost. Now, what would happen if we used the carrot and stick approach to solve this problem.
Okay, you have a toaster factory in China that used to be in the US. Let's say it's Black and Decker or another old name. You make a nice profit and your biggest market is in the US. What incentives do you have to return to the US. Easy answer. A 20 to 25% tariff is placed on your toaster or a limit to the number toasters that you can import is in place. But if you want to produce it in the you get a tax break incentive. Plus, you get the cities, counties and states to bid to get your factory in their sites. Many States, Cities and Counties do that for businesses that are located in the United States even today. It's become a lucrative Corporate Business. It's actually good business if the terms are long enough. They usually aren't. Cities, Counties and States aren't the brightest bulbs.
Once the setup is paid for, drop the tariffs on the the incoming products. But keep some of the incentives in place for not only the ones that relocated back to the US but also the ones that never left the US Shores. One of the biggest complaints I have heard from Corporations is that the ones in the region don't get the same breaks as the ones that the regions are trying to entice into coming there. What happens there is, you just created another portable Corporation.
This is the simplified version that probably doesn't make any sense other than to an Economist or a Production Supervisor. But, suffice to say, we have been screwing the pooch for many decades. The Governments should be there to help the communities not to punish the Corporations or other Countries.
