Invest in manufacturing, the basis of Trump's tariff policy, clearly a paradox. Tariff's will cost jobs, not create them as Trump has been advised.
Manufacturing went overseas, because NAM and the Chamber of Commerce pushed for it, especially the auto industry. The profit margin of corporations was being pushed by rising variable costs. Variable costs include labor, which in turn raised the price of cars and products to the consumer.
Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT and manufacturing moved to Mexico, much of it has since moved to Asia, as Mexican wages have increased.
It takes years to rebuild a manufacturing base. Old structures need to be plowed under, and new modern structures built, which will be automated and AI driven, about the only jobs created will be temporary construction jobs.
As costs increase, demand goes down, unless the demand for a product is inelastic (the demand for water, air and nutrition are inelastic). in the U.S. the demand for debt appears to be inelastic, especially the use of credit cards.
Jobs will not return, even if manufacturing returns. Ford used to build auto's, from tires to bodies and engines, now it brags on TV that it ASSEMBLES more vehicles than any other company,as the parts come in from contractors and subcontractors all over the world and the country, and most of the assembly is by robots, including things like welding. Tariffs will raise the price of a car, since much is imported.
For the U.S. to become a working man's paradise, blue collar America will have to regress to the 1950's. and that is the wet dream of MAGA and Trump., and an impossibility in the 21st Century, yet they are trying and in the process destroying lives and the very democracy that provided the means to attain the wealth, security and comfort they enjoy..
Robots are electro mechanical instruments, Parts fail, and when they fail a human has to come in and repair them. Otherwise robots work in the dark, they don't see, so they don't need light, and the company saves in the electricity bill, so when the robots need servicing they turn on the lights.
Who said anything about self correcting.. The robots used in manufacturing and assembly are bolted to the factory floor, parts wear out, wires fray, moving parts need oiling and all of this requires the attention of a human sitting at a console. We are far from self monitoring, ambulatory robots, that can oil their joints, replace frayed wires, and chips.
Mr. Solomon, I don't think self correcting is the issue here. Cybernetics means self correcting. All computers are self correcting. That is what Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener meant when they used the word cybernetics. Modern computers were invented as cybernetic machines when the U.S. navy discovered that their radar-sighted guns were over-correcting and vibrating themselves to pieces. The navy hired Rosenbluth, a Mexican at Harvard and Wiener an American, at MIT, to solve the problem of the failure of the radar-sighted guns to work. The solution those two men came up with, was cybernetics, self adjusting electronic machines. You can probably find some history about this at a good university library. You might want to start with Wiener's book, meant for the layman, THE HUMAN USE OF HUMAN BEINGS. Strange title. I read it years ago in grad school.
I think the question here is: What do we do when a moving part in a computer controlled machine, like a bearing, wears out? Answer: Turn on the lights and let a mechanic fix the bearing in the machine, not the computer in the robot.
As an undergrad at Wayne State Univ. I was fortunate enough to watch, as a spectator only, a colloquium with Norbert Wiener at the table of scholars from many schools. G. B. Harrison the world's leading Shakespeare scholar from the University of Michigan made an argumentative point by quoting a lengthy monologue from one of the Bard' plays. I was able to follow his point because I had taken two Shakespeare courses using Harrison's book. When Harrison was finished with his small speech and fell silent after making his point; everyone stared in admiration at him.
Wiener spoke up and said "Yes, but if you continue with what Shakespeare was saying you will find when you continue with his words that he meant something else entirely." Wiener then went on to pick up exactly where the great G.B. Harrison left off and continued to complete the Bard's lengthy passage word for word. Wiener had made his point. We were all flabbergasted. No one more so than G.B. Harrison, whose mouth hung open.
Wiener said that a true scholar should be well educated enough in four different disciplines so that he could understand the latest research in all those fields. And he should be educated enough in at least one more field so that he can conduct independent, original research in that field. True story. There were giants in the earth.
I'm originally from Pennsyltucky, the buckle of the rust belt, 20 miles from Youngstown Ohio, once the 5th largest steel producer in the world. Today, that area produces virtually nothing.
Thom is partly right. I also blame the 1952 tax code, the abuse of capital gains taxes, and the rise of vulture capitalists. Once upon a time, companies prospered if it reinvested and did their own research and development. No more. Companies were incentivized to sell to take capital gains taxes. Companies that off shored production could take a tax deduction to do so.
We also set up competition by our so-called allies. Germany. Japan. South Korea. Even if they assemble procucts in the US, the profits go offshore.
Just yesterday, Trump was back in Pitsburgh, taking credit for the sale of US Steel to the Japanese.
Here is one hell of an interesting article on tariff's , alas it is behind a pay wall, but the gist is that labor a hundred years ago was in conflict with itself over tariff's, as the fall out from tariff's was that it benefited the fat cats and did nothing for the worker.
"There is no doubt a logic to contemporary organized labor’s support of tariffs–just as there was on convention floors and in newspaper columns a century plus ago. But make no mistake; lobbying aggressively for taxes on foreign imports is the wrong path forward for labor. Workers a hundred years prior worked through this debacle and came out not with an embrace of fair or of free trade per se but of a bold fiscal vision that reordered how wealth was distributed in America. Workers, and organized labor in particular, are at a similar inflection point as they stare down an uncertain future. Is it protection plain and simple, a fractious policy prescription that divides labor by trade and industry, or is it something bolder? Is it tariffs, with union-busting Trump and industry management in the driver’s seat, or is it a movement by and for all of the producing class?"
Here is when Tariff's worked. Henry VII slew Richard III and found he owned a country that was the poor man of Europe, impassable roads, poverty regnant, and barons had no income by which to pay taxes.
The major export was raw, dyed wool, everything was imported especially fine goods.
So he levied an export on raw wool, and the import of fine goods like Silverware, silks, fine linen.
His actions forced the English woolers, like my ancestor, to build textile mills, and thus created their own textile industry, dynaty's and fortune.
A home grown silver smithing industry evolved, as did a steel industry.
But this is not the case of the United States.We export products that we also import.
We export oil and import oil, we export wood and import wood, we export fruit and import fruit.We export chips and import chips.
The wings of Boeing airplanes are imported from China, A Chinese company, Foxconn, makes cell phones for an American company,Apple.
Portmanteau for corner of Kentucky and Pennsylvania! Love it! I had to look it up cause I thought you had misspelled Pennsylvania. Believe it or not my insatiable curiosity for seemingly small stuff manifests into researching more of the territory, governance, culture etc.
The best time to start manufacturing in the US was yesterday. The second best time is today but of course that can’t happen in the uncertainty of the Thiel administration.
Even if factories are primarily via robotic manufacturing, having them here is vital. Esp for the jobs that were very repetitive, dangerous, or demanded high numbers of workers to accomplish. The Covid crisis demonstrated the need to be self sufficient and organized within your own country, just in case. The numbskulls who want to cancel our entire conversion to electric and away from fossil fuels are really destroying our future here as those are the modern edge of manufacturing for the foreseeable future. The investments made during the Biden admin are being squandered by this regime in ways both damning ( politicians selling out their own constituents some of whom were jumping on and creating businesses) and maddening (the first investments in soooo long just going to waste due to stubborn resistance around solar, EVs, fast trains, the future.
Al Levine (You know him as Alexander Hamilton) didn't know anything about securities, arbitrage, derivitives, etc. He was the father of the national dificit to pay off Revolutionary War debt.
The average Norwegian makes on average more than $10 G more per capita than we do. Norway has essentially no national deficit. Norway has virtually no manufacturing.
I agree. The main manufacturing I see is creating a new and better cleaner world without fossil fuels. We are really really fucking this up and wasting precious time ;while these know nothing moron monsters rip off our country and force us to “invest”
Our hard earned tax monies into extermination camps . It is beyond absurd because it is so clearly anti human. Who do they think They are. I know I know, it is hard to believe they share anything in common. But last I heard, we didn’t have an actual alien invasion…..tho there are many body snatchers who say they are capturing “aliens”. It is all very confusing if you have a human heart, brain, and soul because it just doesn’t seem possible that the world is choosing the very worst of us to “run things”and yet here we are with a genocide here, a genocide there.
Just to give you an idea, the Dakotas are the Saudi Arabia of wind. Trump opposes, ridicules all wind projects. The governors of those states are supported by the fossil fuel indiustry. Thus thousands, if not humdreds of thousands of potential jobs in the wind industry are lost.
On Wednesday, the Interior Department issued a directive requiring Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal approval for even the most routine activities related to wind and solar projects on federal lands. The directive could have a much broader impact, affecting scores of projects on private land that must pass through or connect with projects on Interior-managed federal land, according to industry officials, financiers and lawyers. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/18/definitely-playing-favorites-interior-memo-could-strike-dire-blow-to-wind-and-solar-projects-00460801
Burgrum is a former governor of N. Dakota.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, warned the move would hamstring the U.S. economy by delaying additions of readily available power.
“The president and Secretary Burgum will then be responsible for raising electricity prices on every state in this country because that will be the end result of that kind of abuse of permitting,” he said. “I would warn them if they create this as a precedent and it survives, a future administration could play the same game with oil and gas pipelines and leases.”
"China, meanwhile, wants to keep American manufacturing within their borders, both for the revenue, to keep America helpless in the face of a threatened embargo (as may happen if we defend Taiwan), and — according to concerned intelligence officials — so they can insert into US-bound tech products the ability to spy on us.[clxvii]"
Then the Chinese should be the main advocates of ICE: creating a federal occupational force to police American citizens in their homes and communities, to intimidate people at the voting polls and to suppress Americans' protests by force. The Chinese should have passed loyalty oaths in 38 States making it illegal to advocate for boycotting Chinese companies or criticizing the Chinese government.
The Chinese have not been able to do that. We know what foreign power has lobbied with huge amounts of money and successfully advocated in imposing all of this on American citizens. Now, Tom, how about showing some spine to talk about who this is? It's not China. It's not even Russia.
Much less a bunch of men standing strong for teenage girls. I like the optics, but.....
Is that what Republicans are doing? The angel on my shoulder says yes---the other shoulder has a little devil telling me these f*ckers only care about owning the libs. Epstein contributed to them. From Open Secrets: "Jeffrey Epstein donated extensively to Democrats throughout the nineties until the investigations into the allegations of sexual coercion of a minor began."
I'm a staunch Dem. We can't give up on getting the money under control and getting sleaze out of politics.
I do appreciate these insights so much. I hope more will trace these truths to these conclusions. The techno-feudalists can't see the world being this round, and will doubtless dismantle our public weal for purely immature, selfish reasons, buried under layers of gloss and imaginary constructs. China may not have all these problems, and we can actually assure that by looking more deeply and establishing proper trade unblemished by foolish autocratic thinking. Proper industrial policy recognizes strategic advantages in local production, while taking advantage of trade benefits. We can be a lot smarter than we look right now.
Promoting manufacturing was a good idea in 1791, but it's 2025 now. Robots can manufacture goods cheaper than the cheapest labor. If we look for high value-added products now that are least vulnerable to AI and robotization, what are our best long-run options? How about research, education, and health care? You take a kid who cannot read and, given the right education, in 25 years he or she has become a world famous inventor. Becoming the world leader in these areas makes economic sense, and that's just what was developing here until Trump's destructive temper tantrum undermined our stature in all three.
Mr. Light, agriculture is an obvious option for generating wealth. The U.S. is an agricultural powerhouse. It always comes as a surprise to my new friends in Oregon when I tell them that the second greatest industry in Michigan during the seventy years I lived there was agriculture. Even in Michigan with all of its manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals, agriculture was not only greater than Pharma, it was almost on a parr with auto manufacturing. Kellog and Post originated in Michigan.
Imagine how productive all other states could be if we geared up nationally for it. Ag is now relatively labor free in many areas of production. The central valley in California is the largest continuous tract of highly productive Agricultural land on the planet. There are only 2 other places in the world similar, [both are smaller] in Chile and India. According to the U.S. Hydrological service map there are 250,000 rivers in the lower 48 states. An incredible abundance of potable, non-salt water. The Great Lakes make up 1/5 of the entire world's surface clearwater. Lake Baikal is another 1/5. The other 3/5 is scattered all around the entire globe. We are blessed by Mother nature here in the U.S. Meanwhile, we are poisoning all the life-sustaining, indispensable, vital clearwater as fast as we can.
Bear in mind that agriculture produces more than only human food. Most of the corn in the corn belt is not grown for human consumption. In area the U.S. is the 4th largest nation on earth. It is a hair behind China. But a huge portion of China's land is useless Lassa. That is why the bulk of Chinese live along rivers and seafront. Much of China's interior is virtually deserted. Both of my children who spent some extended time in China were impressed at how everyone seemed to live in truly immense cities and there was no traveling to the interior, because there is not much there due to the infertile conditions, except along several rivers.
Both Russia and Canada are much larger than the U.S. But these countries are not in a latitude as favorable to Ag. as is the U.S.
For 3 years I studied and did empirical research in agricultural sociology at Iowa State University while in graduate school, some time ago, and I submit that the U.S. can easily generate great wealth through agriculture. It is colossally immoral to allow any U.S. citizen to go without housing or good nutrition.
It is a pipe dream to think about manufacturing returning to this country. Capitalism goes where the profits are greater. Locations with cheaper labor, cheaper raw materials and larger markets.
As regards the Central Valley in California from Sacramento, Bakersfield, to Lodi and the Salton Sea you would be hard pressed to find more avid MAGAts.
Gerald. America was an agricultural nation, and an onlooker until WWII. Yes there are family farms, and they struggle and vote for Trump, but the real farmers are corporations, in 1984, the biggest farmer in America was Prudential Insurance.
I leased or owned huge swathes of land from Texas to Minnesota. Every spring they would lease farm equipment (Tractors with Radios, CD players, microwaves and refrigerators and hire operators, starting in Texas and working their way north, they would plow and seed, when they arived at their final destination, they turned the equipment over to the leasing company, and bussed the drivers home. They had a crew responsible for seeing that the irrigators were operational. Come harvest time, they repeated the process but this time with combines and harvesting tractors.
In Eastern Washington, from the Columbia river on past Moses Lake, is black basaltic sand, grade 6 S, sterile, but easily worked, The land is leased by "family farms", meaning family owned corporations. They also used these tractors to plow, seed and harvest the potatoes. The spread petro chemical fertilizer on the sterile sand, drill a hole in a quarter section, to reach the water table and then install a center driven irrigater, the kind that creates these green circles you see when flying over the heartland. I would call them family farms, not in the aspect of Willie Nelson's non profit, well they are in the same manner that Georgia Pacific, Marathon Gas, etc are family owned businesses by the Koch's.
Mr. Farrar, The conversion from family farms to Monsanto and Black Seed Company farms, etc. ie. corporate agribusiness, was in its early stages when I was studying agricultural sociology at ISU as a grad student. It was not a pleasant looking trend. But not necessarily because large farms were inherently bad. The problem was uncontrolled, inadequately regulated capitalism which was in the process of turning farming into corporate agricultural industry, part of huge conglomerates. We found that actual family owned farms were much less likely to harm the soil than agribusinesses; because the families living on the land care about it. No surprise there.
The agribusinesses were quickly pumping all the water up out of the Ogallala aquifer, an amount of water roughly equivalent to the Great Lakes. This water will never be replaced. Once it is gone, it is final, empty. The Great Lakes, and our river system, however, are continuously replacing themselves from the atmosphere.
I was particularly fascinated by "total confinement hog farming." It is ingenious as hell, and productive and profitable. Cattle raising is not total confinement but it was getting close with its huge feed lots. My opinion is that the raising of hogs and cattle should be licensed and closely regulated by the government to limit the huge amount of resources those highly inefficient sources of food production utilize and the pollution they are capable of generating.
We make no attempt to regulate the relative amounts of nutritional sources produced by animal husbandry on the one hand and plant life on the other. Anything like that was called evil socialism.
The movement toward growing chicken flesh in containers and selling it to the public as food sounds creepy to me. But it advances yearly. The difference in the taste of chickens raised in the open field versus those raised in confinement is quite remarkable. The open field chicken flesh is much more savory than the confinement chicken. However, unless you live in or near a city with a strong gourmet population, like Portland, Oregon; it is difficult to find a genuine open-field-raised chicken. The city of Portland allows residents to legally raise three chickens in their yard. Many citizens cheat and raise four. Open range is not the same thing as open field. "Open range" is a con job used by advertisers to make the buyer think the chicken spent its life outside. "Open range" chickens are raised in huge buildings with tiny outlets for a small number of chickens to maybe get outside, occasionally.
You must live near Thom Hartmann, he also lives in Portland, an island of sanity is a sea of red fanaticism.
I actually feel for the animals in factory farms. So inhuman, so horrible, all people care about is money, and that they do to other living creatures to get money is not at all redeeming of our species.
It wasn't until I got into my 70's that it dawned on me, that I live in a planet of horrors. All life on this planet, except for mineral eating microbes, exists on the death of other life, and when it comes to animals, mostly being eaten alive, and in horror.
Makes me conceptualize a god as a psychic vampire, that uses the planet as it's won garden/ factory farm and lives off the negative energy generated by all creatures, large and small. the anger, the fear, the pain, the horror are all food.
As regards chicken, don't eat it, tried to eat southern fried chicken three times, can't stand the taste and texture, same with pork. bacon and ham I can eat, but not much. I can manage some cuts of beef and burgers, but red meat is not on my menu, unless traveling. Tonight it will be home made split pea soup, tomorrow night as well, maybe Wednesday night, last two nights was home made potatoe salad. We don't eat processed foods, except for, in emergencies, Amy's. Amy's is only food, no chemicals extra fat, soil or sugars. Cost a dollar or two more than say Banquet or Swanson,but healthier.
I consider myself fortunate that I can afford that option. I snack on fresh fruit, which reminds me I have to check my plum tree in the yard, it is a yellow plum and loaded, more than I can eat, but the deer will help me out.
I think I mentioned that when I lived in Panama I would visit my suegra in Santiago de Veraguas. She kept her chickens in the back, no fence, just an old dead tree.
When she wanted to cook she would go out grab a chicken flick her wrist and kill it. Next day or two she would come back from the market with a new chicken, tied a leg to the base of the tree.
The other hens would all peck at it, and after three days she untied the string and the chicken assumed it's position. The top hen perched at the very top of the tree, and would from time to time peck the next hen, and the process continued all the way down, and from that I learned the real meaning of the pecking order.
None of the hens ever tried to escape or fly away.
I learned quite a bit from that family. She had a large house, with three different, apartments, next to each other, hers was on the north end, a son and his family on the south, a daughter and her family in the middle.
She sold the lottery in the market, played the same number over and over, then one day she won the big one, and built her own home, a hacienda,with all the accoutrements including aire aconditionado.
I had to teach her how to make enchilado's and tacos, but they made chicken tamales, however it was the whole leg, bone and all.
Her favorite spice was oregano, had no idea what cumin was.
In the world of robots, computer learning, and AI, building anything will never be the same. That includes homes when you throw in 3D printing.
This is the science fiction "utopia" that we read about as young folks. I don't even have to be able to spell to write this comment.
Economic theory is just that. Got 10 economists---you are going to get 10 opinions. Add to that, the "money" circulated is made out of thin air. Blind faith. Bullshit from corporate and market evaluations on stock and commodities are another thing.
Scandinavia is working this out year by year. We are going to have to overcome the old thinking from the right and the rich to do the same. Once we get past this evil period with psychos and their Republican enablers in control, we are going to innovate and invent our way to a livable America. This time it actually needs to include EVERYONE! We are not going back.
Well, you left yourself open for this attack. Read comments below. In capitalism, consumers buy value. Capital searches out value. China grew because it had a way to provide value at a lower cost! This is how capitalism works. It also supplemented the cost with government funds to gain market share. They bought our bonds with profits from sales to us! It is called CAPITALISM!
David: The reason there is a U.S.A. is because of capitalism. A joint venture company called the London Company of Virginia. But Capitalism is also responsible for our slide into authoritarianism, because as that famous capitalist John Davidson Rockeller said "Competition is a sin"
Capitalism has given us oligarchs in Russia and oligrachs in America, the difference being that Russian oligarchs control sectors of the economy, and American oligarchs are warring with each other for control of sectors of the economy, but still squeeze out competition.
Capitalism only works when there are restrictions, regulations and enforcement. In France you can buy a cell phone, cheap, and then purchase a SIM from one of the service providers, and don't have to get locked in to a 2 year contract, and be exploited like one of our service providers exploit us.
Invest in manufacturing, the basis of Trump's tariff policy, clearly a paradox. Tariff's will cost jobs, not create them as Trump has been advised.
Manufacturing went overseas, because NAM and the Chamber of Commerce pushed for it, especially the auto industry. The profit margin of corporations was being pushed by rising variable costs. Variable costs include labor, which in turn raised the price of cars and products to the consumer.
Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT and manufacturing moved to Mexico, much of it has since moved to Asia, as Mexican wages have increased.
It takes years to rebuild a manufacturing base. Old structures need to be plowed under, and new modern structures built, which will be automated and AI driven, about the only jobs created will be temporary construction jobs.
As costs increase, demand goes down, unless the demand for a product is inelastic (the demand for water, air and nutrition are inelastic). in the U.S. the demand for debt appears to be inelastic, especially the use of credit cards.
Jobs will not return, even if manufacturing returns. Ford used to build auto's, from tires to bodies and engines, now it brags on TV that it ASSEMBLES more vehicles than any other company,as the parts come in from contractors and subcontractors all over the world and the country, and most of the assembly is by robots, including things like welding. Tariffs will raise the price of a car, since much is imported.
For the U.S. to become a working man's paradise, blue collar America will have to regress to the 1950's. and that is the wet dream of MAGA and Trump., and an impossibility in the 21st Century, yet they are trying and in the process destroying lives and the very democracy that provided the means to attain the wealth, security and comfort they enjoy..
90% of the functions performed by line workers in 1960 are now performed by robots.
Yup. Lihts are turned on , on factory floors, when a robot needs servicing.
What does that mean ‘when a robot’ needs servicing’lights are turned on?
Robots are electro mechanical instruments, Parts fail, and when they fail a human has to come in and repair them. Otherwise robots work in the dark, they don't see, so they don't need light, and the company saves in the electricity bill, so when the robots need servicing they turn on the lights.
Who says robots won't be able to self correct?
Google. Robots with the ability to self-correct are an active area of research and development in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Who said anything about self correcting.. The robots used in manufacturing and assembly are bolted to the factory floor, parts wear out, wires fray, moving parts need oiling and all of this requires the attention of a human sitting at a console. We are far from self monitoring, ambulatory robots, that can oil their joints, replace frayed wires, and chips.
Mr. Solomon, I don't think self correcting is the issue here. Cybernetics means self correcting. All computers are self correcting. That is what Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener meant when they used the word cybernetics. Modern computers were invented as cybernetic machines when the U.S. navy discovered that their radar-sighted guns were over-correcting and vibrating themselves to pieces. The navy hired Rosenbluth, a Mexican at Harvard and Wiener an American, at MIT, to solve the problem of the failure of the radar-sighted guns to work. The solution those two men came up with, was cybernetics, self adjusting electronic machines. You can probably find some history about this at a good university library. You might want to start with Wiener's book, meant for the layman, THE HUMAN USE OF HUMAN BEINGS. Strange title. I read it years ago in grad school.
I think the question here is: What do we do when a moving part in a computer controlled machine, like a bearing, wears out? Answer: Turn on the lights and let a mechanic fix the bearing in the machine, not the computer in the robot.
As an undergrad at Wayne State Univ. I was fortunate enough to watch, as a spectator only, a colloquium with Norbert Wiener at the table of scholars from many schools. G. B. Harrison the world's leading Shakespeare scholar from the University of Michigan made an argumentative point by quoting a lengthy monologue from one of the Bard' plays. I was able to follow his point because I had taken two Shakespeare courses using Harrison's book. When Harrison was finished with his small speech and fell silent after making his point; everyone stared in admiration at him.
Wiener spoke up and said "Yes, but if you continue with what Shakespeare was saying you will find when you continue with his words that he meant something else entirely." Wiener then went on to pick up exactly where the great G.B. Harrison left off and continued to complete the Bard's lengthy passage word for word. Wiener had made his point. We were all flabbergasted. No one more so than G.B. Harrison, whose mouth hung open.
Wiener said that a true scholar should be well educated enough in four different disciplines so that he could understand the latest research in all those fields. And he should be educated enough in at least one more field so that he can conduct independent, original research in that field. True story. There were giants in the earth.
I'm originally from Pennsyltucky, the buckle of the rust belt, 20 miles from Youngstown Ohio, once the 5th largest steel producer in the world. Today, that area produces virtually nothing.
Thom is partly right. I also blame the 1952 tax code, the abuse of capital gains taxes, and the rise of vulture capitalists. Once upon a time, companies prospered if it reinvested and did their own research and development. No more. Companies were incentivized to sell to take capital gains taxes. Companies that off shored production could take a tax deduction to do so.
We also set up competition by our so-called allies. Germany. Japan. South Korea. Even if they assemble procucts in the US, the profits go offshore.
Just yesterday, Trump was back in Pitsburgh, taking credit for the sale of US Steel to the Japanese.
When will we ever learn?
Here is one hell of an interesting article on tariff's , alas it is behind a pay wall, but the gist is that labor a hundred years ago was in conflict with itself over tariff's, as the fall out from tariff's was that it benefited the fat cats and did nothing for the worker.
https://medium.com/@neowcedcommittee/organized-labor-and-the-tariff-friends-or-foes-a305a51a64da
The final paragraph
"There is no doubt a logic to contemporary organized labor’s support of tariffs–just as there was on convention floors and in newspaper columns a century plus ago. But make no mistake; lobbying aggressively for taxes on foreign imports is the wrong path forward for labor. Workers a hundred years prior worked through this debacle and came out not with an embrace of fair or of free trade per se but of a bold fiscal vision that reordered how wealth was distributed in America. Workers, and organized labor in particular, are at a similar inflection point as they stare down an uncertain future. Is it protection plain and simple, a fractious policy prescription that divides labor by trade and industry, or is it something bolder? Is it tariffs, with union-busting Trump and industry management in the driver’s seat, or is it a movement by and for all of the producing class?"
Here is when Tariff's worked. Henry VII slew Richard III and found he owned a country that was the poor man of Europe, impassable roads, poverty regnant, and barons had no income by which to pay taxes.
The major export was raw, dyed wool, everything was imported especially fine goods.
So he levied an export on raw wool, and the import of fine goods like Silverware, silks, fine linen.
His actions forced the English woolers, like my ancestor, to build textile mills, and thus created their own textile industry, dynaty's and fortune.
A home grown silver smithing industry evolved, as did a steel industry.
But this is not the case of the United States.We export products that we also import.
We export oil and import oil, we export wood and import wood, we export fruit and import fruit.We export chips and import chips.
The wings of Boeing airplanes are imported from China, A Chinese company, Foxconn, makes cell phones for an American company,Apple.
Well over half of us HAVE learned, so there is that, Daniel. I know that's what keeps me going.
Portmanteau for corner of Kentucky and Pennsylvania! Love it! I had to look it up cause I thought you had misspelled Pennsylvania. Believe it or not my insatiable curiosity for seemingly small stuff manifests into researching more of the territory, governance, culture etc.
The best time to start manufacturing in the US was yesterday. The second best time is today but of course that can’t happen in the uncertainty of the Thiel administration.
Even if factories are primarily via robotic manufacturing, having them here is vital. Esp for the jobs that were very repetitive, dangerous, or demanded high numbers of workers to accomplish. The Covid crisis demonstrated the need to be self sufficient and organized within your own country, just in case. The numbskulls who want to cancel our entire conversion to electric and away from fossil fuels are really destroying our future here as those are the modern edge of manufacturing for the foreseeable future. The investments made during the Biden admin are being squandered by this regime in ways both damning ( politicians selling out their own constituents some of whom were jumping on and creating businesses) and maddening (the first investments in soooo long just going to waste due to stubborn resistance around solar, EVs, fast trains, the future.
IMHO we have the capacity to do what Norway has done. https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-norway-became-freer-than-america-39b
Al Levine (You know him as Alexander Hamilton) didn't know anything about securities, arbitrage, derivitives, etc. He was the father of the national dificit to pay off Revolutionary War debt.
The average Norwegian makes on average more than $10 G more per capita than we do. Norway has essentially no national deficit. Norway has virtually no manufacturing.
I agree what you say about green technology. IMHO the future value of green tech is greater than manufacturing and fossil fuels combined. Seems like a lot is already fleeing to places like Canada. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/15/u-s-solar-projects-face-development-crunch-while-canada-says-build-baby-build/
I agree. The main manufacturing I see is creating a new and better cleaner world without fossil fuels. We are really really fucking this up and wasting precious time ;while these know nothing moron monsters rip off our country and force us to “invest”
Our hard earned tax monies into extermination camps . It is beyond absurd because it is so clearly anti human. Who do they think They are. I know I know, it is hard to believe they share anything in common. But last I heard, we didn’t have an actual alien invasion…..tho there are many body snatchers who say they are capturing “aliens”. It is all very confusing if you have a human heart, brain, and soul because it just doesn’t seem possible that the world is choosing the very worst of us to “run things”and yet here we are with a genocide here, a genocide there.
And then there is Norway. I’ll read more.
Just to give you an idea, the Dakotas are the Saudi Arabia of wind. Trump opposes, ridicules all wind projects. The governors of those states are supported by the fossil fuel indiustry. Thus thousands, if not humdreds of thousands of potential jobs in the wind industry are lost.
On Wednesday, the Interior Department issued a directive requiring Secretary Doug Burgum’s personal approval for even the most routine activities related to wind and solar projects on federal lands. The directive could have a much broader impact, affecting scores of projects on private land that must pass through or connect with projects on Interior-managed federal land, according to industry officials, financiers and lawyers. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/18/definitely-playing-favorites-interior-memo-could-strike-dire-blow-to-wind-and-solar-projects-00460801
Burgrum is a former governor of N. Dakota.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, warned the move would hamstring the U.S. economy by delaying additions of readily available power.
“The president and Secretary Burgum will then be responsible for raising electricity prices on every state in this country because that will be the end result of that kind of abuse of permitting,” he said. “I would warn them if they create this as a precedent and it survives, a future administration could play the same game with oil and gas pipelines and leases.”
I dearly hope this isn’t an obituary.
"China, meanwhile, wants to keep American manufacturing within their borders, both for the revenue, to keep America helpless in the face of a threatened embargo (as may happen if we defend Taiwan), and — according to concerned intelligence officials — so they can insert into US-bound tech products the ability to spy on us.[clxvii]"
Then the Chinese should be the main advocates of ICE: creating a federal occupational force to police American citizens in their homes and communities, to intimidate people at the voting polls and to suppress Americans' protests by force. The Chinese should have passed loyalty oaths in 38 States making it illegal to advocate for boycotting Chinese companies or criticizing the Chinese government.
The Chinese have not been able to do that. We know what foreign power has lobbied with huge amounts of money and successfully advocated in imposing all of this on American citizens. Now, Tom, how about showing some spine to talk about who this is? It's not China. It's not even Russia.
The MAGA base has cracked over the exploitation of children. Who knew where their line was? https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/maga-base-cracked?r=3m1bs
Much less a bunch of men standing strong for teenage girls. I like the optics, but.....
Is that what Republicans are doing? The angel on my shoulder says yes---the other shoulder has a little devil telling me these f*ckers only care about owning the libs. Epstein contributed to them. From Open Secrets: "Jeffrey Epstein donated extensively to Democrats throughout the nineties until the investigations into the allegations of sexual coercion of a minor began."
I'm a staunch Dem. We can't give up on getting the money under control and getting sleaze out of politics.
I do appreciate these insights so much. I hope more will trace these truths to these conclusions. The techno-feudalists can't see the world being this round, and will doubtless dismantle our public weal for purely immature, selfish reasons, buried under layers of gloss and imaginary constructs. China may not have all these problems, and we can actually assure that by looking more deeply and establishing proper trade unblemished by foolish autocratic thinking. Proper industrial policy recognizes strategic advantages in local production, while taking advantage of trade benefits. We can be a lot smarter than we look right now.
Promoting manufacturing was a good idea in 1791, but it's 2025 now. Robots can manufacture goods cheaper than the cheapest labor. If we look for high value-added products now that are least vulnerable to AI and robotization, what are our best long-run options? How about research, education, and health care? You take a kid who cannot read and, given the right education, in 25 years he or she has become a world famous inventor. Becoming the world leader in these areas makes economic sense, and that's just what was developing here until Trump's destructive temper tantrum undermined our stature in all three.
Mr. Light, agriculture is an obvious option for generating wealth. The U.S. is an agricultural powerhouse. It always comes as a surprise to my new friends in Oregon when I tell them that the second greatest industry in Michigan during the seventy years I lived there was agriculture. Even in Michigan with all of its manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals, agriculture was not only greater than Pharma, it was almost on a parr with auto manufacturing. Kellog and Post originated in Michigan.
Imagine how productive all other states could be if we geared up nationally for it. Ag is now relatively labor free in many areas of production. The central valley in California is the largest continuous tract of highly productive Agricultural land on the planet. There are only 2 other places in the world similar, [both are smaller] in Chile and India. According to the U.S. Hydrological service map there are 250,000 rivers in the lower 48 states. An incredible abundance of potable, non-salt water. The Great Lakes make up 1/5 of the entire world's surface clearwater. Lake Baikal is another 1/5. The other 3/5 is scattered all around the entire globe. We are blessed by Mother nature here in the U.S. Meanwhile, we are poisoning all the life-sustaining, indispensable, vital clearwater as fast as we can.
Bear in mind that agriculture produces more than only human food. Most of the corn in the corn belt is not grown for human consumption. In area the U.S. is the 4th largest nation on earth. It is a hair behind China. But a huge portion of China's land is useless Lassa. That is why the bulk of Chinese live along rivers and seafront. Much of China's interior is virtually deserted. Both of my children who spent some extended time in China were impressed at how everyone seemed to live in truly immense cities and there was no traveling to the interior, because there is not much there due to the infertile conditions, except along several rivers.
Both Russia and Canada are much larger than the U.S. But these countries are not in a latitude as favorable to Ag. as is the U.S.
For 3 years I studied and did empirical research in agricultural sociology at Iowa State University while in graduate school, some time ago, and I submit that the U.S. can easily generate great wealth through agriculture. It is colossally immoral to allow any U.S. citizen to go without housing or good nutrition.
It is a pipe dream to think about manufacturing returning to this country. Capitalism goes where the profits are greater. Locations with cheaper labor, cheaper raw materials and larger markets.
As regards the Central Valley in California from Sacramento, Bakersfield, to Lodi and the Salton Sea you would be hard pressed to find more avid MAGAts.
I'm sure you are correct.
Gerald. America was an agricultural nation, and an onlooker until WWII. Yes there are family farms, and they struggle and vote for Trump, but the real farmers are corporations, in 1984, the biggest farmer in America was Prudential Insurance.
I leased or owned huge swathes of land from Texas to Minnesota. Every spring they would lease farm equipment (Tractors with Radios, CD players, microwaves and refrigerators and hire operators, starting in Texas and working their way north, they would plow and seed, when they arived at their final destination, they turned the equipment over to the leasing company, and bussed the drivers home. They had a crew responsible for seeing that the irrigators were operational. Come harvest time, they repeated the process but this time with combines and harvesting tractors.
In Eastern Washington, from the Columbia river on past Moses Lake, is black basaltic sand, grade 6 S, sterile, but easily worked, The land is leased by "family farms", meaning family owned corporations. They also used these tractors to plow, seed and harvest the potatoes. The spread petro chemical fertilizer on the sterile sand, drill a hole in a quarter section, to reach the water table and then install a center driven irrigater, the kind that creates these green circles you see when flying over the heartland. I would call them family farms, not in the aspect of Willie Nelson's non profit, well they are in the same manner that Georgia Pacific, Marathon Gas, etc are family owned businesses by the Koch's.
Mr. Farrar, The conversion from family farms to Monsanto and Black Seed Company farms, etc. ie. corporate agribusiness, was in its early stages when I was studying agricultural sociology at ISU as a grad student. It was not a pleasant looking trend. But not necessarily because large farms were inherently bad. The problem was uncontrolled, inadequately regulated capitalism which was in the process of turning farming into corporate agricultural industry, part of huge conglomerates. We found that actual family owned farms were much less likely to harm the soil than agribusinesses; because the families living on the land care about it. No surprise there.
The agribusinesses were quickly pumping all the water up out of the Ogallala aquifer, an amount of water roughly equivalent to the Great Lakes. This water will never be replaced. Once it is gone, it is final, empty. The Great Lakes, and our river system, however, are continuously replacing themselves from the atmosphere.
I was particularly fascinated by "total confinement hog farming." It is ingenious as hell, and productive and profitable. Cattle raising is not total confinement but it was getting close with its huge feed lots. My opinion is that the raising of hogs and cattle should be licensed and closely regulated by the government to limit the huge amount of resources those highly inefficient sources of food production utilize and the pollution they are capable of generating.
We make no attempt to regulate the relative amounts of nutritional sources produced by animal husbandry on the one hand and plant life on the other. Anything like that was called evil socialism.
The movement toward growing chicken flesh in containers and selling it to the public as food sounds creepy to me. But it advances yearly. The difference in the taste of chickens raised in the open field versus those raised in confinement is quite remarkable. The open field chicken flesh is much more savory than the confinement chicken. However, unless you live in or near a city with a strong gourmet population, like Portland, Oregon; it is difficult to find a genuine open-field-raised chicken. The city of Portland allows residents to legally raise three chickens in their yard. Many citizens cheat and raise four. Open range is not the same thing as open field. "Open range" is a con job used by advertisers to make the buyer think the chicken spent its life outside. "Open range" chickens are raised in huge buildings with tiny outlets for a small number of chickens to maybe get outside, occasionally.
You must live near Thom Hartmann, he also lives in Portland, an island of sanity is a sea of red fanaticism.
I actually feel for the animals in factory farms. So inhuman, so horrible, all people care about is money, and that they do to other living creatures to get money is not at all redeeming of our species.
It wasn't until I got into my 70's that it dawned on me, that I live in a planet of horrors. All life on this planet, except for mineral eating microbes, exists on the death of other life, and when it comes to animals, mostly being eaten alive, and in horror.
Makes me conceptualize a god as a psychic vampire, that uses the planet as it's won garden/ factory farm and lives off the negative energy generated by all creatures, large and small. the anger, the fear, the pain, the horror are all food.
As regards chicken, don't eat it, tried to eat southern fried chicken three times, can't stand the taste and texture, same with pork. bacon and ham I can eat, but not much. I can manage some cuts of beef and burgers, but red meat is not on my menu, unless traveling. Tonight it will be home made split pea soup, tomorrow night as well, maybe Wednesday night, last two nights was home made potatoe salad. We don't eat processed foods, except for, in emergencies, Amy's. Amy's is only food, no chemicals extra fat, soil or sugars. Cost a dollar or two more than say Banquet or Swanson,but healthier.
I consider myself fortunate that I can afford that option. I snack on fresh fruit, which reminds me I have to check my plum tree in the yard, it is a yellow plum and loaded, more than I can eat, but the deer will help me out.
I think I mentioned that when I lived in Panama I would visit my suegra in Santiago de Veraguas. She kept her chickens in the back, no fence, just an old dead tree.
When she wanted to cook she would go out grab a chicken flick her wrist and kill it. Next day or two she would come back from the market with a new chicken, tied a leg to the base of the tree.
The other hens would all peck at it, and after three days she untied the string and the chicken assumed it's position. The top hen perched at the very top of the tree, and would from time to time peck the next hen, and the process continued all the way down, and from that I learned the real meaning of the pecking order.
None of the hens ever tried to escape or fly away.
I learned quite a bit from that family. She had a large house, with three different, apartments, next to each other, hers was on the north end, a son and his family on the south, a daughter and her family in the middle.
She sold the lottery in the market, played the same number over and over, then one day she won the big one, and built her own home, a hacienda,with all the accoutrements including aire aconditionado.
I had to teach her how to make enchilado's and tacos, but they made chicken tamales, however it was the whole leg, bone and all.
Her favorite spice was oregano, had no idea what cumin was.
Nothing old is new again.....
In the world of robots, computer learning, and AI, building anything will never be the same. That includes homes when you throw in 3D printing.
This is the science fiction "utopia" that we read about as young folks. I don't even have to be able to spell to write this comment.
Economic theory is just that. Got 10 economists---you are going to get 10 opinions. Add to that, the "money" circulated is made out of thin air. Blind faith. Bullshit from corporate and market evaluations on stock and commodities are another thing.
Scandinavia is working this out year by year. We are going to have to overcome the old thinking from the right and the rich to do the same. Once we get past this evil period with psychos and their Republican enablers in control, we are going to innovate and invent our way to a livable America. This time it actually needs to include EVERYONE! We are not going back.
O, Captain my Captain my take away from all this is free trade is really a good thing when you understand how it works. Thank you very much, Thom!
Well, you left yourself open for this attack. Read comments below. In capitalism, consumers buy value. Capital searches out value. China grew because it had a way to provide value at a lower cost! This is how capitalism works. It also supplemented the cost with government funds to gain market share. They bought our bonds with profits from sales to us! It is called CAPITALISM!
Said the Pieman to Simple Simon, show me first your penny.
China can thank vultures like Mitt Romney....
David: The reason there is a U.S.A. is because of capitalism. A joint venture company called the London Company of Virginia. But Capitalism is also responsible for our slide into authoritarianism, because as that famous capitalist John Davidson Rockeller said "Competition is a sin"
Capitalism has given us oligarchs in Russia and oligrachs in America, the difference being that Russian oligarchs control sectors of the economy, and American oligarchs are warring with each other for control of sectors of the economy, but still squeeze out competition.
Capitalism only works when there are restrictions, regulations and enforcement. In France you can buy a cell phone, cheap, and then purchase a SIM from one of the service providers, and don't have to get locked in to a 2 year contract, and be exploited like one of our service providers exploit us.