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Trump Pledged to Bring Back Manufacturing. The Sector Is Sputtering.

W_Heisenberg

Trade Representative of Heard and McDonald Islands
DP Veteran
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President Trump has claimed that his sweeping tariff regime will reshore American companies and revive manufacturing in the U.S.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Economic activity tied to manufacturing has shrunk for most of Trump’s second term.

A few investments and pledges aimed at beefing up domestic manufacturing appear timed to appease the president, and may or may not come to fruition. The latest is from Apple, which is planning to commit an additional $100 billion to the U.S., after saying in February it would spend more than $500 billion in the country over four years to make servers and parts for its key products.

Beneath the shiny announcements lies a sector that can’t seem to get off the ground.

From March to July, U.S. manufacturing activity contracted, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s monthly survey. The Manufacturing PMI last registered at 48, below the 50 score that differentiates growth and decline.

The effective average tariff rate on all imported goods now stands at around roughly 18% versus 2.3% last year, the highest levels since the 1930s.

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Summary:
  • U.S. manufacturing has declined during Trump’s second term, despite promises to bring jobs back through reshoring initiatives.
  • Tariffs have risen to 18%, the highest since the 1930s
  • Corporate investment pledges often seem politically timed, with many delayed, uncertain, illusory, and unlikely to result in any domestic manufacturing gains.
  • Consumer uncertainty and labor shortages are leading manufacturers to slow hiring and reduce output, contributing to job losses and weak sector growth.
  • Tariffs are inflating material costs for U.S. manufacturers, eroding any competitive advantage and increasing production challenges.
My conclusion:

Trump is a total ****ing moron. He's an idiot. A belligerent fool.

He is destroying our economy with his stupidity and corruption.
 
Have the fed drop interest rates and you will see more business, more purchasing, more home buyers and more jobs. The fed controlling interest rates is like the socialist controlling all the means of production. It stagnates things.
 
Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...
No, but idiots should not try their hand at it.

Hard to build a new factory when steel, aluminum, and copper all cost more than just a few months ago.
 
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Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...

Any manufacturing we would "lure" back is a bad thing, generally speaking. We just can't compete with cheap third world labor in a globalized economy. It's regrettable, it sucks, but it's what it is. The simple life of a high school education with a wage you can support a family on is gone - it dies with the boomers.

What we should be doing is committing massive amounts of money to industrial policy and R&D. Why bring back old industries and have illegals pick strawberries if you can educate American engineers to build robots propelled by AI to operate on farms and use industrial equipment? We don't need to lure back old industry, we need to create new cutting edge industry and double down on having the most sophisticated technology market on the planet.
 
Apple and Nvidia are 'old industry?'
 
Fletch said:
Apple and Nvidia are 'old industry?'
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The iPhone has never been manufactured in the United States. Neither have most Nvidia products. This has been the cornerstone of the 'Chimerica' economic relationship. It faces the same problems I mentioned before: we literally cannot compete with cheap foreign labor.

Now, that doesn't mean we can't manufacture certain products here still - look no further than Germany for examples. The issue is that it would still require heavy investment in industrial policy and an effective conspiracy between the government, labor unions, and corporations to create conditions suitable for domestic workers. The problem with this, of course, is that you can't come close to creating these conditions without retards screeching about so-shul-isum.
 
Im not a huge fan of tariffs, but increasing the cost of goods made with cheap foreign labor is the way you fight products made with cheap foreign labor.
 
CSharp said:
And the sea is wet and the sky is blue.
Click to expand...

Fletch said:
Im not a huge fan of tariffs, but increasing the cost of goods made with cheap foreign labor is the way you fight products made with cheap foreign labor.
Click to expand...
They problem with this is that doing so drives the price of goods up.
 
Fletch said:
Im not a huge fan of tariffs, but increasing the cost of goods made with cheap foreign labor is the way you fight products made with cheap foreign labor.
Click to expand...

And you also achieve this by increasing all the input costs of raw materials.

It’s no surprise you support a retard for President.
 
Fletch said:
Im not a huge fan of tariffs, but increasing the cost of goods made with cheap foreign labor is the way you fight products made with cheap foreign labor.
Click to expand...

I understand the sentiment, but this has been demonstrated to be (mostly) a futile effort. There are certain industries worth saving, but tariffs alone only worsen the situation for consumers. You'd have to combine tariffs with robust industrial policy and heavy investment, which no one wants to do. Biden entertained this with the CHIPs act, but even that was, in my opinion, laughably insufficient.

Conservatives and libertarians need to get it through their head that we're the eminent global empire. As such, we need to pursue a modern imperial model of economic growth. I'm fine with contracting out low skill labor to third world peasants if it means we're investing in and creating the cutting edge at home. The industrial robot engineer is going to have 100x the wage of some Chinese assembly worker doing the same job 1/100th as efficiently. This is a good thing.
 
Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...
Do you really think the donor class wants to pay wages that would keep the landlords fed? Or will they continue to pay so much less elsewhere that they can just pass the tariffs along to us?
 
Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...
Using tariffs to lure back manufacturing is ****ing stupid.

Subsidizing high-value manufacturing is smart.

Good or bad has nothing to do with this.
 

This has been explained to him.

He knows this.

He doesn't care.

None of them do.
 
The Brad Dad said:
But why don't you want to make America great again, sir?
Click to expand...

Look, if @Fletch thinks 50% tariffs on Brazil will get coffee growing back in the USA, okay. I’m just asking if he thinks the whims of a face painted octogenarian is the best way to do that.
 
Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...

It's a bad thing. Going against Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is always a fool's errand.

Besides items of national security interest, America should not be pursuing am old segment where we are at competitive disadvantage. American workers don't want to work at 3rd world wages, nor should they.

We need to be embracing industries of the future, including service and knowledge industries. There's always going to be cheaper physical manufacturing labour somewhere. We're not going to beat Adam Smith by taxing ourselves to death.
 
Chomsky said:
It's a bad thing. Going against Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is always a fool's errand.
Click to expand...

Wow. Trump has turned someone with Noam Chomsky as an avatar into a neoliberal.

You’ll be quoting The Road to Serfdom soon.
 
Fletch said:
Let me ask you this, is attempting to lure manufacturing back to the US a good thing or a bad thing?
Click to expand...
Irrelevant..
Facts on the ground is trump destroyed what biden created job wise. We can look at solar as an example. Which has been posted here before so no im not finding it for you
 
Integrityrespec said:
Have the fed drop interest rates and you will see more business, more purchasing, more home buyers and more jobs. The fed controlling interest rates is like the socialist controlling all the means of production. It stagnates things.
Click to expand...
 
Integrityrespec said:
Have the fed drop interest rates and you will see more business, more purchasing, more home buyers and more jobs. The fed controlling interest rates is like the socialist controlling all the means of production. It stagnates things.
Click to expand...
Horse crap! More of the Trump nonsense ignoring all facts to the contrary.

The idiotic tariff war with ALL of the economies in the world. Is stifling investment by manufacturers who cannot accurately predict the outcome to this nonsense.

Trump lying through his azz about the 200 deals and all the foreign monies promised by countries that promptly go public denying his claims, is the veritable "poisoned pill" to any committed investment by domestic or foreign manufacturers.

Would anyone with half a brain invest during this period of "thin ice" lack of stability?
 
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