Our passenger rail sucks and our people are expensive. But significant manufacturing remains in the USA (yes, we manufacture more today than ever before, despite the hoopla about outsourcing). There's a reason for that: USA has some pretty good advantages if you know what to look for.
A lot of it is just arguing with ourselves over what to do. But if a consensus is reached, Americans can get it done pretty quickly. There's just so much discussion / debate / noise now.
Can't wait for when US will finally go 110% on green energy and dumping fossils.
Profit / rent-seeking and protectionism are the downfalls of my country (America). I identify that as the root fault of all of our social ills and inability to get work done outside of crisis and people with the right kind of crazy middle-finger to typical business interests drive to be the real life versions of our best superheros. I really do hope Elon Musk gets our species to building-across-the-street backup replication level.
This isn't a one year project, this could be a 25 year project to get the entire pipeline from raw resource to a piece of silicon.
In my opinion the potential for a greater Pan-American economy is the number one counterargument to Chinese global dominance. We have almost everything we need, right here in the Americas.
https://www.tmf-group.com/en/news-insights/business-culture/...
https://www.tmf-group.com/en/news-insights/articles/2018/jun...
There's a threshold where it becomes near impossible to do business. I've seen laptops intended for employees... "disappearing" in customs. When a complaint was made, the reply was to not make a fuss, otherwise more laptops would sprout legs and run away.
Corruption also tends to come with lots of bureaucracy. At every level you have palms to grease. Things tend to take a while unless said palms (which sometimes change often) are properly and generously greased. Then you have different government agencies competing to get the... "funding" - and your company is caught in the crossfire. Good luck getting the components you need imported in a timely manner. That is, until you have finished setting up your... uh, "supply chain"? Which can take a while, because it's obviously all behind the scenes. Hope you have a good "guide".
In the end, you have a government that's working _against_ your company. They will (ironically enough) want to extract maximum value from you and your company. If the place is bad enough, your competitors won't be playing in a fair field either. It's not only how much you can offer, but who you know and what sort of dirt you have on them.
When corruption is really high, neither the police or the justice system will be fair to you. You better hope you have identified everyone that needs palm lubrication - otherwise, you know that particular judge you forgot about? Your competitor has them in their pocket.
Since the police in really corrupt places tend to be ineffective, another way a competitor can cripple your operations is to make you vanish. If it is a place where violent crime is common(not a bad assumption), then it was just another unfortunate statistic.
You don't really want that kind of "opportunity". It's not worth it to decrease taxation. If anything, you will be taxed just as much, except that's now off the books.
Not only you need stockpiles of cash, but you also need to understand the dynamics of the place you are trying to get into. Otherwise, you are just a wealthy(and clueless) mark.
Of course, said company would have to be based entirely in the target country. It couldn't be US-based with a foreign branch, otherwise anti-corruption laws would apply.
Source: born in a pretty corrupt country. Seen a fair amount of shady crap. Trust me, you don't want to deal with that stuff.
Brazil and Argentina feed China, benefit from China’s presence re: the US, and Buenos Aires is as far away from Miami as London is. Throw in the guay’s cause geography, and Bolivia because Bolivia, most of South America’s productive land isn’t counter arguing.
Because any reasonably committed extent of that economy ends at the Amazon, it’s just NAFTA + Colombia + Peru + Chile. Colombia’s a great get and arguably already in progress, but Chile is tiny and Peru is far.
The rest is some of the most picturesque, violent, non trivially developed (expensive!) tropical geography on earth that’s been in the pits for centuries even by extractive colonial standards for a reason, with the Caribbean part anchored by Cuba and Venezuela.
Total population addition less than Mexico, spread across a region the size of Australia, with the “easy” wins a 1000 miles away tucked into the Andes.
Let me introduce you to this little thing called an H1B visa...