He didn’t do anything that actually slowed the loss of our manufacturing base while president.
Cutting funding to certain CDC programs may also have been detrimental.
https://fortune.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-covid-19-cdc-budg...
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-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.
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
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.
Contagions have exponential growth. 40 people coming from Mexico after you've lifted the lockdowns means you need to continue them to keep the 40 from turning into a thousand and then hundreds of thousands. Which means lockdowns of the severity Australia used are useless here because you can never get below the floor necessary to lift them again.
> 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.
The problem with this kind of claim is that it's always the case. Priorities shift, staff gets reassigned etc. Which means that of the 1000 different units, 700 of which grew and 300 of which shrank, you'll be able to find in the list that shrank something that sounds like it might have helped against a given problem. It's just cherry picking.
> 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.
The point is that they weren't missteps. Calling out someone for not actually doing something wrong in order to stir up controversy and ratings and politicize a public health issue is contemptible. Defending yourself against a baseless personal attack is not.
The problem, which CNN should have been able to predict, is that if you politicize an issue, people take sides, even if there was never any reasoned disagreement to be had. But maybe they did predict it and did it anyway, so that when less savvy political opponents predictably started making less supportable claims, it would give the instigators something to shoot down and mount on their wall. Even if people died.
What a straw man. You realize there were photos of daily meetings with large groups, bill signings, news reports on how masks were barely worn in the white house. Yes he didn't wear masks as press conferences because they entire administration was lax about mask usage. And then for you to argue and only mention the press conferences is extremely disingenuous.
And that's separate from the Mexico argument. To me, it's incredible how little responsibility certain groups of people take for their own actions. A political party that has continuously downplayed the cheapest, low effort, low cost method of stopping the virus, instead again tries to blame Mexico instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.
You're missing my point. They would follow him around with a camera and any time they could show him without a mask there would be another story, regardless of the facts or the context. They would write the same story whether or not he was doing anything wrong in that instance.
That's a recipe for creating partisan conflict. They write the story when he's not doing anything wrong and then people correctly defend him. The existence of true instances are not a defense to reporting false ones. Because this is basic psychology; once people start defending something they keep doing it. So they created a large population of people willing to defend not wearing a mask. It was totally irresponsible.
It's the old saw about how the best way to discredit an idea is to defend it loudly with transparently erroneous arguments. That's what CNN were doing throughout.
> And that's separate from the Mexico argument. To me, it's incredible how little responsibility certain groups of people take for their own actions.
Please pay attention to context.
The argument I'm making is that the severe lockdowns as used in Australia could not have been as effective here because they only work if you can close your borders in practice, which Australia can do and the US can't. We're not even talking about "low effort, low cost" methods -- the argument is that higher cost efforts, of the sort that could actually get the number of cases to zero, couldn't have worked here. Even if the US put everyone in solitary confinement for a month, attempting to reopen the day after that would have still seen dozens of new cases.
That is a different argument to the one that more severe extended lockdowns would have saved lives. Which might very well be true (though against some grisly trade offs), but it's no support for claiming that it would have been better for US manufacturing in 2020, which is ridiculous.
Trump's so-called China ban was a farce. It didn't stop USA residents from flying into the USA, it didn't even stop the immediate family of residents from flying to the USA.
Australia closed all travel from China initially and later from everywhere else in the world. There's plenty of room for criticism as they also stopped Australians from returning home, but the results are tough to argue with.
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.
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.
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.
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?
They're not. One can't cut taxes below zero, for starters. Some industries need more than just having negligible taxes to get started, especially in capital intensive businesses.
Furthermore, the idea that the only lever that the government has to induce people to do things is lowering taxes is completely absurd. Tax cuts didn't build the Hoover dam, the interstate highway system, nor send a man to the Moon.
The government can use targeted investments, messaging, procurement, tax cuts, and so on in order to move people towards certain outcomes.
The day that the US government announces that they'll buy 100 million masks a month for a strategic reserve or replace all of the mobile devices for all federal employees, as long as they're at at most a 50% premium over the cheapest option and are fully traceable from raw materials to finished product as being fully built in the US and allied countries, is the day that people will start investigating if it's possible to do so, and start trying to do so if it's possible.
> This seems like something you need Democrats to do rather than something you need Trump to do.
It takes two to tango. Many other countries are able to pass laws and make progress, even in complex multiparty negotiations during minority governments.
You might want to check with the IRS, since that's exactly what the EITC does. It's also the de facto result when a company takes a tax loss (e.g. from deducting more expenses than it had in revenue, common for startups) and can then sell the tax loss to another company to offset its tax burden.
> Tax cuts didn't build the Hoover dam, the interstate highway system, nor send a man to the Moon.
As opposed to Tesla's plant at Niagara Falls, or the various privately-owned rail networks in the world, or SpaceX?
> The day that the US government announces that they'll buy 100 million masks a month for a strategic reserve or replace all of the mobile devices for all federal employees, as long as they're at at most a 50% premium over the cheapest option and are fully traceable from raw materials to finished product as being fully built in the US and allied countries, is the day that people will start investigating if it's possible to do so, and start trying to do so if it's possible.
But that's actually more expensive, and less productive, than just making it more cost effective to manufacture things domestically than somewhere else, because domestic production has low taxes and efficient regulations and production in countries that engage in currency manipulation or have inadequate environmental protections are subject to tariffs.
> It takes two to tango.
That's the problem. It doesn't matter how willing one side is to negotiate if Democrats are too busy fabricating lies about Russia collusion to come to the table. Compromise requires both sides to be reasonable.
The EITC is for individuals that have low incomes, AFAIK. Can you elaborate on how the EITC would increase the amount of US manufacturing?
> It's also the de facto result when a company takes a tax loss (e.g. from deducting more expenses than it had in revenue, common for startups) and can then sell the tax loss to another company to offset its tax burden.
Can the tax loss be sold separate from the legal entity itself?
> As opposed to Tesla's plant at Niagara Falls, or the various privately-owned rail networks in the world, or SpaceX?
Are you saying that without the TCJA, none of these would have been built?
> But that's actually more expensive, and less productive, than just making it more cost effective to manufacture things domestically than somewhere else
Making it "more cost effective" through tax cuts helps existing businesses, not starting new ones.
If a business needs $10 million in capital to buy the machinery necessary to make widget X, and has to compete with an existing factory that produces equivalent widgets and has paid off their existing machinery, how can they compete? The existing business already has relationships with suppliers, customers, and distributors, and if the new entrant looks like it will be trouble, they can just cut their profit margin such that the new entrant will be struggling to cover the extra expenses associated with building all of those relationships while paying off the loans to acquire the machinery.
Heck, both of those businesses could reduce their profit margins to zero, with both having an effective tax rate of zero, and only the established one would be able to effectively compete due to lower costs.
> That's the problem. It doesn't matter how willing one side is to negotiate if Democrats are too busy fabricating lies about Russia collusion to come to the table.
Or one could say that the Republicans are unwilling to play ball as well (eg. over COVID-19 related stimulus). The fact is, whether one party is at fault over the other, Americans and US businesses are paying the cost of the lack of bipartisan initiatives to improve the state of US manufacturing.
The EITC is an example of a "tax cut" that allows for negative tax rates.
> Can the tax loss be sold separate from the legal entity itself?
Actually selling the tax loss is generally only done for defunct companies, since a company expecting a future profit would just keep it in their pocket to use themselves later. Although you could probably still do it if you wanted to by splitting the company in two and then selling the one that "owns" the tax loss or something similar.
> Are you saying that without the TCJA, none of these would have been built?
I'm saying that private entities can build things like that.
> If a business needs $10 million in capital to buy the machinery necessary to make widget X, and has to compete with an existing factory that produces equivalent widgets and has paid off their existing machinery, how can they compete?
The real issue is that if you add a factory, you could be in a situation of overcapacity, and then you're locked in price competition and selling at thin margins, which nobody likes.
The secret is this. Factories have a finite lifetime, e.g. 30 years. So you have an incumbent that has paid off their factory. It's 28 years old. You pay $10M to build a new factory, today. They're going to drive prices below your cost for two years, but then they're going to have to build a new factory themselves... and bow out, because the alternative would mean being locked in unprofitable price competition with you for another 28 years. So you win the market and can go back to charging profitable margins. You just have to time your entry right, i.e. finish your construction just before they start on theirs.
Assuming you're even two different companies. Otherwise you just build your company's new factory in the new place whenever the old one in the old place is ready to be mothballed.
> The existing business already has relationships with suppliers, customers, and distributors, and if the new entrant looks like it will be trouble, they can just cut their profit margin such that the new entrant will be struggling to cover the extra expenses associated with building all of those relationships while paying off the loans to acquire the machinery.
To some extent this is also just a war of attrition. If a new entrant causes oversupply for any reason then it persists until somebody goes out of business. This has more to do with who has more money they're willing to set fire to in order to capture a given amount of market share than who was in the market first.
One way to help your people win is to ensure cheap access to capital (i.e. low interest rates), but that's already there in the US.
> Or one could say that the Republicans are unwilling to play ball as well (eg. over COVID-19 related stimulus).
It was your impression that the Republicans were the ones holding this up? They had every political incentive to accept any reasonable bill before the election, and even now to do it before the inauguration in order to take credit for it.
> The fact is, whether one party is at fault over the other, Americans and US businesses are paying the cost of the lack of bipartisan initiatives to improve the state of US manufacturing.
On this we agree.
This already exists, it's called a refundable tax credit.
Can you tell my suppliers this so they stop passing on 50% of the cost of the tariffs onto me please? They don’t seem to have gotten your memo that the Chinese are paying the tariffs instead of the consumers.
I literally have “import tariffs” as a line item on all my invoices that relate to goods manufactured in China. Every single supplier appears to be colluding to increase their profits, if what you’re saying is true.
The alternative is that tariffs are actually driving up costs unnecessarily.
As an aside. Most US based businesses have already moved on. It seems that alot of European-run businesses are laggards
Disagree. I think this is small minded. So you add a tariff on chinese goods. If they are not the cheapest, then you buy from elsewhere... which still isn't the USA.
And then China does the same thing: retaliating with tariffs, and then buying goods from elsewhere, which isn't the USA either.
So in this game, tariffs probably hurt businesses in both countries.
And, anecdotally: I still buy products from china. More today than 4 years ago. The products for sale on Amazon are often just chinese imports that have been marked up or re-branded. I think it's the exception, rather than the rule, that tariffs did anything positive for someone.
But that's still good. It provides for supply chain diversity even if it isn't in the US. Now you can buy from China and Mexico instead of only China.
Then you get a functional supply chain operating in Mexico, which has geographical proximity to the US and has greater overlap in language and culture, and you're one step closer to manufacturing in Arizona and Texas.
> And then China does the same thing: retaliating with tariffs, and then buying goods from elsewhere, which isn't the USA either.
But the US has a 3:1 trade imbalance with China, so we can use a third of the money to cancel out their tariffs on our stuff. Or threaten to raise ours 33% if they don't stop.
The US has leverage here, but only if they use it.
> And, anecdotally: I still buy products from china.
Manufacturing left the US over the course of 50 years. It isn't going to all come back in less than 5 years. We're talking about long-term here.
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.
Increased production in India and Brazil don't do anything for the loss of U.S. manufacturing.