As long as both parties focus on the stock market and financial engineering, manufacturing cannot survive. I spent 40 years in manufacturing. Just went to my college reunion. All the engineers that switched to financial sales and advice are now worth 100-200 x more than me……and I graduated at top of dept in on,y 3 years from on of top 10 Chemical engineering schools in the country. Our congress can’t even pass a no stock trading rule (forget Trump 3,711 trades last reporting period. We need Mike Rowe as head of Commerce department.
Yes, I'm always amazed at the little money engineers make relative to their education and training, unbelievable. It just shows what our elites value, it isn't engineers, and teachers, that's for sure. We can always outsource and get this on the cheap from India, or Asia. Homegrown ones get no respect. My sisters fiancé years ago graduated as an engineer and I spoke with him about the education he received and heard him discuss all the training and difficult courses he took. And saw the money he made for all of this effort, sad. He never complained, he worked hard and kept at it, Money didn't motivate him thank God for us, we need people like him more and more. But yes, you are so right.
The best example of Bessent's point is the extraordinary mobilization of industry for WW2. We had a robust manufacturing base in the civilian sector. Kaiser pivoted from civil engineering to producing massive numbers of ships building the shipyards first. We would be hard pressed to do that today.
It is not entirely clear to me whether Oren is more concerned about manufacturing itself or manufacturing employment. I agree that we need to manufacture more, but, with increasing automation and rapidly advancing AI, it is not clear that more manufacturing will generate a great deal of employment. Does Oren think that more manufacturing will yield large numbers of well- paying jobs (as it did in the past)?
It's not simply the number of people employed that matters, and it's not simply the people employed at that one factory. As you point out, the modern factory is a lot more automated. The jobs using and maintaining those automated systems pay a lot better then the old jobs. That in turn spreads through the economy as those men and women buy bigger houses and go out to eat more.
Take it a step further, the jobs in the factories and workshops that build those automated machines will also pay more, in part because they represent skilled trades more then simple factory workers. Yet if a business can have the automated machines designed in the US today, but built and used in foreign factories thanks to low tariff that don't account for the costs of protecting those global supply lines, then most of the long term benefits go to those foreign countries. Over time, even the job of designing those automated machines will wind up going to the same foreigners that are more familiar with using and maintaining those existing machines.
Ship building is a great example of an industry that has been completely hollowed out in America. We are now at the point that not only are we having to borrow more and more to replace our aging warships, we struggle to find the facilities and expertise needed even when not engaged in war. Yet we have completely separated the cost of defending the sea lanes, from pirates and terrorists, from the cost of commercial shipping. So not only do we not have enough skilled welders, the large automated welding machines that do exist were designed and built in places like South Korea and China.
At the end of the day, both manufacturing and manufacturing employment are intertwined. Bringing back manufacturing will increase the number of well paying jobs. Not all those jobs will be in the factories. Some will be in offices where the automated machines are designed. Some will be in the factories, not as permanent employees, but as skilled installers and repair men. Either way, we either get our collective heads out of our rears, or we won't be able to defend the worlds sea lanes anyway.
What's fascinating to me is how the people that claim to care most about the poor are the ones supporting a policy that suppresses wages for low income Americans. The contradiction is obvious, but the corporate media almost never call them out on this nonsense.
Another day, another attempt by Oren to apply lipstick to the DonOrenomics pig. As consumer confidence and manufacturing employment wane while inflation and interest rates rise, Oren stands at the ready to retrofit an intellectual veneer on the actions of the leader of the "new" right. How dutiful.
Perhaps in time their America Alone strategery will extricate us from the hellhole that they've preached is modern day America. Keep the faith!
Resiliency is important. But can that sentiment go too far? Fortress America? America alone? These are misguided ideas in my opinion. Also the paste is out of the tube, train has left the station… pick your metaphor. But this article harkens back to Reagan and that was the 80s like 1980s when outsourcing really ramped up. The wave of globalization has happened! I would argue it was always going to happen. That said, being resilient and less dependent on unreliable even manipulative countries is an important issue! But why does Oren think it’s okay to destroy our relations with our dependable allies; countries like Canada and Mexico that we could be in concert with for our production needs? Did Ricardo miss on all economic metrics? Is comparative advantage a completely false theory? Any sane person sees the two countries at our borders and says to themselves- “boy we have a pretty decent neighborhood”! Not to mention the ability to work with the EU and even many countries in Asia or the global south. We all know the sketchy countries in terms of trust and malevolence. Why are we shunning the reliable places that could help us form a bulwark against mischief? We have allies that could provide us unity towards economic resilience.
Because countries are not really our friends, they are associates. IF we have the same common interests. IF working with them is in our good interests. IF not then they are not to be trusted and are unreliable. Very simple here really. Many times, Mexico and Canada and Europe and China have not been in our best interests only in theirs!? WTF
Get over this, want everyone to be our friend and love us and want to be like us. NOT going to happen, get over that.
I agree we should not expect to be “friends” with countries but allies/partnerships are the way to balance/blunt the only other global super power - China!
Equating our differences with Mexico or Canada with the complexities of our relationship to the Middle Kingdom is absurd. Im simply saying America Alone is folly even if you beat your chest while saying it. We should’ve passed TPP despite the rejection from Hilary and Trump camps at the time. It’s the best way we can have leverage over the other global power who is not constrained by our classical liberal values- constitution, democracy, rule of law, etc.
If you want to understand why the "Neo-liberal world order" is collapsing. Re-read your own comment. Then think about this. Canada spent it's own blood and treasure helping us fight pirates and chase terrorists. Canada has sent it's navy through the south China sea to conduct freedom of navigation exercises with our other allies. Canada keeps sending it's army to do practice drills in Europe.
Mexico aids and supports Cuba and Venezuela, who are allied with China and Russia. Mexico aids and abets criminals that smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants into America. We have even caught people on the terrorist watch list coming across our southern border.
In effect, ever since we signed NAFTA, America and Canada have been paying the entire cost of protecting and defending the global supply chains that increasingly feed the Mexican factories. Which given the poor record on protecting workers or the environment, means rewarding the corrupt politicians and businessmen in Mexico with more ways to exploit their people and environments while Canada's and America's industrial base is hollowed out. Now both our nations are now struggling to find the experience and facilities needed to replace our aging warships, much less the money to pay for it.
Same thing explains why the European Union is getting so weak. Austria and Ireland aren't part of NATO and spend 1% and 0.25% (respectively) on defense. Yet we expect Belgium and Denmark to be able to spend 3-5% on defense and still somehow compete against the lower taxes and/or larger budgets for infrastructure and education that those nation are left with. Explain how Italy and France are going to tax and spend 3-5% of their GDP per year on defense while Spain spends only 2%.
And all that before you deal with how do we protect the environment from toxic waste or other well accepted threats if a company can just sidestep those regulation by moving production to some where that will allow them to dump that waste into the environment.
It's in refusing to admit, much less account for these externalities that the western world order is going bankrupt and increasingly unable to hold back the adversarial actors like Russia, China and Iran.
MAGA now claims Russia is an "adversarial actor”? Irony truly is dead...
MAGA has what Don instructed them they wanted. Don has obliterated the old world order, we have chosen to confront China alone. He's jettisoned our former democratic allies in Europe, Asia and even our own hemisphere in favor of Russia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Hungary (oops), and a handful of small African nations willing to accept our deportees for petty cash.
Judging from his inane daily bleats, count me skeptical that his inescapable incoherence will lead to a grand new design. But make sure to read his every word, every day, maybe I'm missing something.
Don, being ignorant of history, only judges NATO by what countries contribute financially, kinda like the country club dues he's used to. He's incapable of understanding more complex and meaningful metrics, or the strategic benefits NATO provides. Then again, he famously didn't know what the nuclear triad was either...
Now, he slowly twists in the wind as we lurch toward accepting inevitable defeat in MAGA's disastrous Middle East war. It's humbling to see our great nation humiliated so thoroughly. Imagine Don at 82...
You need a little more Jesus in your life, Karl. Remind yourself of god's love and mercy. Then maybe you can start chipping away at that bubble of hate and anger you've surrounded yourself with.
But, Don said he was Jesus? As I recall that was right around the time JD, of all people, was lecturing the pope about making sure his opinions were "anchored in the truth", and being "careful" regarding "matters of theology". Talk about irony being dead:) At least he didn't claim the pope was secretly Haitian and hence eats pets, so I guess that's progress...
Sorry Dan, I'm gonna keep calling out the leaders of the "new" right for what they are. It's not my fault if merely repeating their words and actions makes you uncomfortable, it's theirs.
There’s only one adversary- China. Russia is a corrupt petro-state with a cowed, aging population run by a wannabe Czar who thought he could erase Ukraine in two weeks. Iran is in even worse shape save for a 20 mile strait it now threatens with cheap low-tech drones. Cuba? Venezuela? We should be worried bc Mexico gives them a few crumbs to survive. I don’t think so. NAFTA didn’t bring Globalization. That was a wave that was going to happen bc ppl in developing countries would strive for a better life with autos and AC despite any agreements the rich countries signed. I just agree with others who have made the point that America Alone or Fortress America will not work. Forming strong partnerships and alliances is the way to maintain balance and leverage vis a vis China.
You're missing the point. By doing all these trade deals with nations like Mexico, China, and Indonesia. Countries that don't help us patrol the sea lane, don't help us fight pirates, and don't help us chase down the terrorists, we are undermining countries like Canada, Japan and Germany.
You try to write off what you don't want to deal with. The Ukraine war has as much to do with Germany making itself reliant on Russian oil and gas even while they spent years underfunding their defenses. That in turn has a lot to do with Volkswagen increasingly competing against Ford and Toyota who are getting more of their parts made in China and their trucks assembled in Mexico. That leaves Germany with few options other than to buy the cheapest oil it can get. That leaves Germany in the position of needing to underfund it's military to avoid running ever larger deficits. Meanwhile Mexico, China, and Indonesia aren't stepping up to help defend Ukraine.
So if you want to see Fortress America, then keep pushing the idea that trade can be separated from mutual defense and shared values. If you actually want to form strong and durable partnerships, then we have to start accounting for the costs of defending the global order. That means treating our allies to better trade agreements and expecting the same back. If you stop for a minute, you can see the Japanese and Polish governments get it. Unfortunately the Germans and Canadians, who are the most insulated from the threats refuse to get it.
Then when you get around to the European Union, you start to see just how big a problem we have created and how this won't be solved by playing nice. All those folks running around trying to talk up NATO's recent new commitments are delusional. How can Denmark and Belgium spend a combined 5% on defense and defense related infrastructure and stay competitive with Austria and Ireland who spend 1% and 0.25% respectively. Ireland and Austria can undercut them on taxes and still have more money to spend on regular infrastructure and education. How are France and Italy going to spend 5% when Spain has already declared it won't spend more then 2%.
So back to Canada and Mexico. How can Canada remain competitive while committing to spend 5% on defense while Mexico free rides off America and Canada keeping the global supply lines flowing?
As long as both parties focus on the stock market and financial engineering, manufacturing cannot survive. I spent 40 years in manufacturing. Just went to my college reunion. All the engineers that switched to financial sales and advice are now worth 100-200 x more than me……and I graduated at top of dept in on,y 3 years from on of top 10 Chemical engineering schools in the country. Our congress can’t even pass a no stock trading rule (forget Trump 3,711 trades last reporting period. We need Mike Rowe as head of Commerce department.
I agree with you about Mike Rowe!
Yes, I'm always amazed at the little money engineers make relative to their education and training, unbelievable. It just shows what our elites value, it isn't engineers, and teachers, that's for sure. We can always outsource and get this on the cheap from India, or Asia. Homegrown ones get no respect. My sisters fiancé years ago graduated as an engineer and I spoke with him about the education he received and heard him discuss all the training and difficult courses he took. And saw the money he made for all of this effort, sad. He never complained, he worked hard and kept at it, Money didn't motivate him thank God for us, we need people like him more and more. But yes, you are so right.
The best example of Bessent's point is the extraordinary mobilization of industry for WW2. We had a robust manufacturing base in the civilian sector. Kaiser pivoted from civil engineering to producing massive numbers of ships building the shipyards first. We would be hard pressed to do that today.
It is not entirely clear to me whether Oren is more concerned about manufacturing itself or manufacturing employment. I agree that we need to manufacture more, but, with increasing automation and rapidly advancing AI, it is not clear that more manufacturing will generate a great deal of employment. Does Oren think that more manufacturing will yield large numbers of well- paying jobs (as it did in the past)?
It's not simply the number of people employed that matters, and it's not simply the people employed at that one factory. As you point out, the modern factory is a lot more automated. The jobs using and maintaining those automated systems pay a lot better then the old jobs. That in turn spreads through the economy as those men and women buy bigger houses and go out to eat more.
Take it a step further, the jobs in the factories and workshops that build those automated machines will also pay more, in part because they represent skilled trades more then simple factory workers. Yet if a business can have the automated machines designed in the US today, but built and used in foreign factories thanks to low tariff that don't account for the costs of protecting those global supply lines, then most of the long term benefits go to those foreign countries. Over time, even the job of designing those automated machines will wind up going to the same foreigners that are more familiar with using and maintaining those existing machines.
Ship building is a great example of an industry that has been completely hollowed out in America. We are now at the point that not only are we having to borrow more and more to replace our aging warships, we struggle to find the facilities and expertise needed even when not engaged in war. Yet we have completely separated the cost of defending the sea lanes, from pirates and terrorists, from the cost of commercial shipping. So not only do we not have enough skilled welders, the large automated welding machines that do exist were designed and built in places like South Korea and China.
At the end of the day, both manufacturing and manufacturing employment are intertwined. Bringing back manufacturing will increase the number of well paying jobs. Not all those jobs will be in the factories. Some will be in offices where the automated machines are designed. Some will be in the factories, not as permanent employees, but as skilled installers and repair men. Either way, we either get our collective heads out of our rears, or we won't be able to defend the worlds sea lanes anyway.
What's fascinating to me is how the people that claim to care most about the poor are the ones supporting a policy that suppresses wages for low income Americans. The contradiction is obvious, but the corporate media almost never call them out on this nonsense.
Another day, another attempt by Oren to apply lipstick to the DonOrenomics pig. As consumer confidence and manufacturing employment wane while inflation and interest rates rise, Oren stands at the ready to retrofit an intellectual veneer on the actions of the leader of the "new" right. How dutiful.
Perhaps in time their America Alone strategery will extricate us from the hellhole that they've preached is modern day America. Keep the faith!
Clueless...
Only if one suffers from Trump Denial Syndrome, or, as you refer to it, the religion of nihilism:). Keep on believin Jeff, and enjoy your Sunday.
Resiliency is important. But can that sentiment go too far? Fortress America? America alone? These are misguided ideas in my opinion. Also the paste is out of the tube, train has left the station… pick your metaphor. But this article harkens back to Reagan and that was the 80s like 1980s when outsourcing really ramped up. The wave of globalization has happened! I would argue it was always going to happen. That said, being resilient and less dependent on unreliable even manipulative countries is an important issue! But why does Oren think it’s okay to destroy our relations with our dependable allies; countries like Canada and Mexico that we could be in concert with for our production needs? Did Ricardo miss on all economic metrics? Is comparative advantage a completely false theory? Any sane person sees the two countries at our borders and says to themselves- “boy we have a pretty decent neighborhood”! Not to mention the ability to work with the EU and even many countries in Asia or the global south. We all know the sketchy countries in terms of trust and malevolence. Why are we shunning the reliable places that could help us form a bulwark against mischief? We have allies that could provide us unity towards economic resilience.
Because countries are not really our friends, they are associates. IF we have the same common interests. IF working with them is in our good interests. IF not then they are not to be trusted and are unreliable. Very simple here really. Many times, Mexico and Canada and Europe and China have not been in our best interests only in theirs!? WTF
Get over this, want everyone to be our friend and love us and want to be like us. NOT going to happen, get over that.
I agree we should not expect to be “friends” with countries but allies/partnerships are the way to balance/blunt the only other global super power - China!
Equating our differences with Mexico or Canada with the complexities of our relationship to the Middle Kingdom is absurd. Im simply saying America Alone is folly even if you beat your chest while saying it. We should’ve passed TPP despite the rejection from Hilary and Trump camps at the time. It’s the best way we can have leverage over the other global power who is not constrained by our classical liberal values- constitution, democracy, rule of law, etc.
If you want to understand why the "Neo-liberal world order" is collapsing. Re-read your own comment. Then think about this. Canada spent it's own blood and treasure helping us fight pirates and chase terrorists. Canada has sent it's navy through the south China sea to conduct freedom of navigation exercises with our other allies. Canada keeps sending it's army to do practice drills in Europe.
Mexico aids and supports Cuba and Venezuela, who are allied with China and Russia. Mexico aids and abets criminals that smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants into America. We have even caught people on the terrorist watch list coming across our southern border.
In effect, ever since we signed NAFTA, America and Canada have been paying the entire cost of protecting and defending the global supply chains that increasingly feed the Mexican factories. Which given the poor record on protecting workers or the environment, means rewarding the corrupt politicians and businessmen in Mexico with more ways to exploit their people and environments while Canada's and America's industrial base is hollowed out. Now both our nations are now struggling to find the experience and facilities needed to replace our aging warships, much less the money to pay for it.
Same thing explains why the European Union is getting so weak. Austria and Ireland aren't part of NATO and spend 1% and 0.25% (respectively) on defense. Yet we expect Belgium and Denmark to be able to spend 3-5% on defense and still somehow compete against the lower taxes and/or larger budgets for infrastructure and education that those nation are left with. Explain how Italy and France are going to tax and spend 3-5% of their GDP per year on defense while Spain spends only 2%.
And all that before you deal with how do we protect the environment from toxic waste or other well accepted threats if a company can just sidestep those regulation by moving production to some where that will allow them to dump that waste into the environment.
It's in refusing to admit, much less account for these externalities that the western world order is going bankrupt and increasingly unable to hold back the adversarial actors like Russia, China and Iran.
MAGA now claims Russia is an "adversarial actor”? Irony truly is dead...
MAGA has what Don instructed them they wanted. Don has obliterated the old world order, we have chosen to confront China alone. He's jettisoned our former democratic allies in Europe, Asia and even our own hemisphere in favor of Russia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Hungary (oops), and a handful of small African nations willing to accept our deportees for petty cash.
Judging from his inane daily bleats, count me skeptical that his inescapable incoherence will lead to a grand new design. But make sure to read his every word, every day, maybe I'm missing something.
Don, being ignorant of history, only judges NATO by what countries contribute financially, kinda like the country club dues he's used to. He's incapable of understanding more complex and meaningful metrics, or the strategic benefits NATO provides. Then again, he famously didn't know what the nuclear triad was either...
Now, he slowly twists in the wind as we lurch toward accepting inevitable defeat in MAGA's disastrous Middle East war. It's humbling to see our great nation humiliated so thoroughly. Imagine Don at 82...
Good luck America.
You need a little more Jesus in your life, Karl. Remind yourself of god's love and mercy. Then maybe you can start chipping away at that bubble of hate and anger you've surrounded yourself with.
But, Don said he was Jesus? As I recall that was right around the time JD, of all people, was lecturing the pope about making sure his opinions were "anchored in the truth", and being "careful" regarding "matters of theology". Talk about irony being dead:) At least he didn't claim the pope was secretly Haitian and hence eats pets, so I guess that's progress...
Sorry Dan, I'm gonna keep calling out the leaders of the "new" right for what they are. It's not my fault if merely repeating their words and actions makes you uncomfortable, it's theirs.
There’s only one adversary- China. Russia is a corrupt petro-state with a cowed, aging population run by a wannabe Czar who thought he could erase Ukraine in two weeks. Iran is in even worse shape save for a 20 mile strait it now threatens with cheap low-tech drones. Cuba? Venezuela? We should be worried bc Mexico gives them a few crumbs to survive. I don’t think so. NAFTA didn’t bring Globalization. That was a wave that was going to happen bc ppl in developing countries would strive for a better life with autos and AC despite any agreements the rich countries signed. I just agree with others who have made the point that America Alone or Fortress America will not work. Forming strong partnerships and alliances is the way to maintain balance and leverage vis a vis China.
You're missing the point. By doing all these trade deals with nations like Mexico, China, and Indonesia. Countries that don't help us patrol the sea lane, don't help us fight pirates, and don't help us chase down the terrorists, we are undermining countries like Canada, Japan and Germany.
You try to write off what you don't want to deal with. The Ukraine war has as much to do with Germany making itself reliant on Russian oil and gas even while they spent years underfunding their defenses. That in turn has a lot to do with Volkswagen increasingly competing against Ford and Toyota who are getting more of their parts made in China and their trucks assembled in Mexico. That leaves Germany with few options other than to buy the cheapest oil it can get. That leaves Germany in the position of needing to underfund it's military to avoid running ever larger deficits. Meanwhile Mexico, China, and Indonesia aren't stepping up to help defend Ukraine.
So if you want to see Fortress America, then keep pushing the idea that trade can be separated from mutual defense and shared values. If you actually want to form strong and durable partnerships, then we have to start accounting for the costs of defending the global order. That means treating our allies to better trade agreements and expecting the same back. If you stop for a minute, you can see the Japanese and Polish governments get it. Unfortunately the Germans and Canadians, who are the most insulated from the threats refuse to get it.
Then when you get around to the European Union, you start to see just how big a problem we have created and how this won't be solved by playing nice. All those folks running around trying to talk up NATO's recent new commitments are delusional. How can Denmark and Belgium spend a combined 5% on defense and defense related infrastructure and stay competitive with Austria and Ireland who spend 1% and 0.25% respectively. Ireland and Austria can undercut them on taxes and still have more money to spend on regular infrastructure and education. How are France and Italy going to spend 5% when Spain has already declared it won't spend more then 2%.
So back to Canada and Mexico. How can Canada remain competitive while committing to spend 5% on defense while Mexico free rides off America and Canada keeping the global supply lines flowing?