We’re seeing economic growth. We’re seeing unemployment numbers drop (either by employment or dropping out of system).. But we’re not seeing pay rates rise. Yes buy American, but have fun trying to find a product that is 100% thru and thru built in the US – PB/TK
Why Trump’s ‘Buy American, Hire American’ Is Un-American – By Nick Gillespie & Todd Krainin | July 24 2017
In his quest to “Make America Great Again,” President Trump has spent a week encouraging us all to buy products “Made in America.”
That makes for a good slogan—who doesn’t want to support home-grown businesses? But it’s bad and incoherent policy. And it will do little or nothing to help Americans who have been put out of work by changes in technology and the economy.
For starters, it’s hard to even get a clean definition of what it means for a product to be made in America. Dozens of products that carry a “made in America” tag were largely assembled or sourced outside the United States, with only a little bit of labor added within our borders. The Jeep Patriot, for instance, pushes nationalism in its very name but its transmissions are made in Japan, Germany, and Mexico.
The U.S. often has much higher labor costs than foreign countries, which means the same thing created solely in America would have an astronomical cost. According to one estimate, Apple iPads made totally in America would cost $967 a piece, or about three times today’s basic price. The resulting fall in sales would cost about 67,000 manufacturing jobs.
Pushing “Made in America” comes with other costs, too. To hype his “Made in America” policy, Trump invited 50 exemplary companies to the White House for a photo op. It turns out that 21 of them received various federal, state, and local subsidies worth about $600 million. If you’re taxing Peter to subsidize Paul, chances are you’re not creating much real economic activity.
Continue to reason.com article: http://reason.com/reasontv/2017/07/24/trump-buy-american-hire-american
