American Presidential Elections 2016

[woolley]

Trump is going to his face rubbed in it like a naughty puppy every step of the way (although I will say it should the same for every one who wants to "lead")

 

This from rmanx who was lecturing me earlier about being civil to people who you know and who you don't know!

[pongo]

Oh sorry I forgot to laugh at how outrageously funny that was...

Don't you find loquacious grandiloquence amusing.

[notwell]

"Bollocks" - Quilp.

And Notwell

[woolley]

OK, it's degenerated into handbags now, so let’s run with it. Just for fun. Of course the lefties are horrified by Trump. I admit that even I would have preferred a Clinton win because “The Donald” is just so “out there” and says some totally off the wall things. He’s easy for the chattering classes to throw stones at. And yet…..

 

He does say things that have great resonance with his home audience. And he certainly isn’t thick. The media is very selective of the clips they show. Maybe he isn’t a politician, but how many contemporary mainstream politicians can claim to strike the popular chord? He hammers home simplistic arguments, maybe, but surely we can understand why they are music to the ears of ordinary Americans who once had good, well paid jobs in rust belt manufactories and elsewhere, and are now reduced to flipping burgers or doing nothing at all. He is going to bring those jobs home, he says. What is not to like for the Americans in those rundown towns and cities? He is aiming to reduce US corporate tax from 35% to 15%, and make it worthwhile for businesses to stay in the US. Woe betide those firms if they continue to export jobs to cheap labour economies, because they are going to have to pay import tariffs if they want to sell the goods at home. Consequences he calls it. He has been told that it isn’t “presidential” to ring up corporation CEOs and bend their ears about creating American jobs. He says they are going to have to get used to it. No wonder he won!

 

Naturally, the liberals are aghast. The “educated” elite are running around like headless chickens because the turn of events is anathema to everything they have known and believed throughout their lives. Globalisation is good. Protectionism is bad. This is the mantra that has been unchallengeable even through the financial crisis, and the forty year long drift of investment to the east. You do have to wonder though if these “liberal” beliefs owe more to the particular “education” they had rather than any intelligence behind their own smug enlightenment, because when all is said and done, the results of outward looking globalisation are really not very liberal at all.

 

Who or what then does globalisation serve? It serves the capitalist elite of course, and they have pulled off a brilliant coup over the years in taking the liberals and social democrats – the political centre, if you like – on the journey with them. Now and then they throw you a morsel of “everyone in the whole world being better off with globalisation”. It’s accepted as gospel and the left have been totally hoodwinked and rendered irrelevant. Paradoxically, I think Corbyn can see this and this is why he was ambivalent about the Remain campaign. He is of course too tainted by his other trendy causes to be a force.

 

So I would ask our friends here on the left of the debate what precisely they would say (besides calling them thick) to those who would like to see a degree of protectionism and more well paid, or even moderately paid manufacturing jobs returning to developed economies. Is it right that former skilled and semi-skilled workers should have to live in straitened circumstances, their livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of the globalisation project? Is there any way that this can be justified to those who have suffered the consequences? It seems peculiar to say the very least that the left is advocating a model developed by capitalists for the greater enrichment of capitalists whilst at the same time decrying as morons those skilled workers who have suffered by its implementation when they have the temerity to kick back.

[Tarne]

I get that. Either way we're in for an interesting four years, already poking the Chinese bear by talking to Taiwan (yes, it's politically silly from our point of view, but those yellow races have a weird saving face thing where the silly politics of ignoring Taiwan have assuaged the beast).

 

I wonder what other hard line acts he's going to do in his uncompromising manner. I still think it'll end it tears but I can't do anything about it so just enjoy the ride

[Donald Trumps]

Ramping it up against China

 

Who'll fire the first shot?

[Albert Tatlock]

[pongo]

He is aiming to reduce US corporate tax from 35% to 15%, and make it worthwhile for businesses to stay in the US. Woe betide those firms if they continue to export jobs to cheap labour economies, because they are going to have to pay import tariffs if they want to sell the goods at home. Consequences he calls it.

Look at something like high tech electronics manufacturing. The price of the labour is not the main issue when it comes to quickly innovating and responding to the availability of components. At best the industry manufactures according to demand - and is absolutely dependent on the local component supply chain. If you're manufacturing high quality and innovative electronic goods you need to be in the same location as the components are also being made - you need to know that you can source a similar thing, probably same day, from multiple potential suppliers. And certainly without having to go through bureaucratic import procedures.

 

You might argue that a company could get around this by importing the required components (presumably paying the new tariffs) and manufacturing locally. Any company operating like that would immediately be on the back foot in terms of quickly innovating + risks losing a lead on competitors + risks inventory issues.

[Declan]

https://youtu.be/ABfsIInfXgU

Is that Eric Idle in bed with a member of Poison?

[woolley]

 

He is aiming to reduce US corporate tax from 35% to 15%, and make it worthwhile for businesses to stay in the US. Woe betide those firms if they continue to export jobs to cheap labour economies, because they are going to have to pay import tariffs if they want to sell the goods at home. Consequences he calls it.

Look at something like high tech electronics manufacturing. The price of the labour is not the main issue when it comes to quickly innovating and responding to the availability of components. At best the industry manufactures according to demand - and is absolutely dependent on the local component supply chain. If you're manufacturing high quality and innovative electronic goods you need to be in the same location as the components are also being made - you need to know that you can source a similar thing, probably same day, from multiple potential suppliers. And certainly without having to go through bureaucratic import procedures.

 

You might argue that a company could get around this by importing the required components (presumably paying the new tariffs) and manufacturing locally. Any company operating like that would immediately be on the back foot in terms of quickly innovating + risks losing a lead on competitors + risks inventory issues.

 

But this doesn't address the fundamental points I made about globalisation, its aims, who it benefits and who is disadvantaged by it. The reason that manufacturing is taking place where it is is financial, pure and simple. It is largely western capital using cheap labour in the east and the benefits of that flow from the ordinary working populations and governments (via declining tax revenues) in the west largely to the capitalist elite. Globalisation is not an altruistic endeavour.

[pongo]

The reason that manufacturing is taking place where it is is financial, pure and simple.

Not in the example I have provided, it isn't. It's about being able to better innovate - to produce better products more quickly. And to maintain inventory matched to demand.

 

And I doubt that the example I have provided is unique - since, almost invariably, what applies in one area will apply similarly in other areas.

[woolley]

 

The reason that manufacturing is taking place where it is is financial, pure and simple.

Not in the example I have provided, it isn't. It's about being able to better innovate - to produce better products more quickly. And to maintain inventory matched to demand.

 

And I doubt that the example I have provided is unique - since, almost invariably, what applies in one area will apply similarly in other areas.

 

This just sounds like the kind of justification we are handed down by globalisation proponents and it is accepted by everyone as the conventional wisdom. Why is this "It's about being able to better innovate - to produce better products more quickly. And to maintain inventory matched to demand." done better on the other side of the world to where most of the products are being sold and used?

 

I can assure you that shipping stuff around the planet is not in the interests of matching inventory to demand. The number of times I've been told I can't have something because of manufacturing problems in China or shipping problems en route from China is so many it's difficult to recall. I've also been involved in businesses that have closed down their manufacturing facilities in the UK to move them to China (including a couple where it all ended in tears, but that's another story).

 

Ask yourself why this all gravitated to the east in the first place. It's money. Taking costs out. One in the eye for the trade unions etc. That's all there is to it.

[Donald Trumps]

British Typhoons have been moved to Japan for 'exercises'

[rmanx]

 

Trump is going to his face rubbed in it like a naughty puppy every step of the way (although I will say it should the same for every one who wants to "lead")

 

This from rmanx who was lecturing me earlier about being civil to people who you know and who you don't know!

 

 

I have said nothing unpleasant about Trump in that post.

 

I was using symbolism (i.e. a naughty puppy getting its nose rubbed a mess it had made) to make a point.

 

Every silly and nasty thing Trump says will be instantly catalogued and ready to be dragged out whenever he makes a mistake (and will do that with gusto).

[pongo]

This just sounds like the kind of justification we are handed down by globalisation proponents and it is accepted by everyone as the conventional wisdom

Can you begin imagine how stupidly expensive and antiquated a British made smartphone (perhaps a Bush or an Amstrad) using only British components would be? It would the Lada of smartphones with a Mercedes price tag.

 

Meanwhile and anyhow - there is a very clear differentiation now between Trump's protectionism vs the way in which Brexit was sold. Farage, Gove and co were all about expanding global trade - rather than focusing so much on the EU. They were never about old-fashioned protectionism.