Okay, I'm adapting Johan Norberg's signature "Dead Wrong" catchphrase (although I think he would share in my assessment of the topic under discussion), This is not my first rant on O'Reilly, and it won't be my last. I also thought of adapting wrestler Chris Jericho's "stupid idiot" bit.
O'Reilly is commenting
here on Trump's highly hyped negotiations to keep 1000 jobs at Carrier's Indianapolis plant.
First, let's deal with this stupid assertion: "
As we've stated, Mr. Trump won the presidency because of his economic vision." Hell no. Now I didn't support Trump, but I know some who did, and nobody I know cited Trump's economic policies. Trump was running in a change election year against the runner-up most unpopular candidate in decades. Almost every poll showed other Republicans running better than Trump against Clinton, and he lost the plurality vote to her. In part, Clinton also underperformed in minority communities. Many Trump economic policies are not that Republican; progressive Democrats have bashed trade, outsourcing, and (unions in particular) immigrant worker competition. for years; they particularly attacked Romney on related grounds. Trump's anti-trade, anti-immigrant stands go against the grain of a more economic liberal GOP policy over the last few decades.
Why was Trump elected? I leave that question to historians, but Clinton was running as a status quo third term of Obama and/or Bill, at a time most polls showed that most voters were unhappy with the direction the country was going. Don't forget it wasn't until the NE regional primaries, not exactly conservative territory (Dem-controlled states) before Trump won a majority of Republican voters. In the end, many Republicans held their noses and voted for him because he wasn't Clinton, were worried about a progressive majority on SCOTUS, and other reasons. A number were one-issue partisans, e.g., virulently anti-immigrant; others saw him as incorruptible because of his wealth; still others bought into his business success and thought he would do the same for America.
It may well be that Trump particularly struck a nerve with those living paycheck to paycheck, bleak job prospects or insecurity without a college degree, and it's possible his nativism, protectionism and corporate bashing spoke to them. It could have made a difference in some Rust Belt states. But, on the thesis that Trump's support was ideological as O'Reilly asserts, as
CBS notes:
How did Trump win when many of his core positions were so unpopular? Some people voted for him regardless of that. Among those who favored giving illegal immigrants a chance to apply for legal status, one in three voted for Trump. Thirty-five percent of people who said international trade creates jobs voted for Trump. And even 27 percent of white voters who said they want the next president to change to more liberal policies voted for Trump.
O'Reilly goes on: "
He promised to stop American corporations from sending blue-collar jobs overseas:" Well, he went beyond that, but let's note that it was mainly bluster. A President has no such constitutional or legal authority. There are a number of not-job-related factors why businesses expand internationally (e.g., access to other trade zones, key resources, logistics, etc.). Additionally, even if you could restrict companies from relocating, you aren't dealing with the core issues. Trump cannot force owners to operate under an unsustainable business model with high personnel costs that cannot be passed onto consumers (e.g., low productivity).
Many job losses free up labor resources better utilized elsewhere in the economy. Keep in mind that the percentage of manufacturing jobs has dropped steadily over the last 50 years and is not a US-specific phenomenon, largely due to technological improvements in production technology; note that this country has evolved from a largely agricultural economy to the point that only about 2% of the nation's workforce works in that sector, despite a much higher population.
TRUMP: “Companies like Carrier are firing their workers and moving to Mexico. Ford is moving all of their small car production to Mexico. When I’m president, if a company wants to fire their workers and leave for Mexico or other countries then we will charge them a 35% tax when they wanna ship their products back into the United States, and they won’t leave, believe me.”
This campaign soundbite is
manifestly false: Ford is shifting production of the smaller cars because it wants to use capacity for more lucrative products, like pickup trucks and sports vehicles. [Not to mention that Carrier is still shifting about 1300 jobs from 2 Indiana plants, despite Trump's hyped negotiation.] It's not just that, but Trump is remarkably ignorant about
what happens with American production abroad:
The Commerce Department total for direct American investment in foreign countries has tripled since 1945, when it neared $8.3 billion, and more than doubled since 1950, when it stood at $11,8 billion. Most of the huge dollar investment abroad in the past decade has gone into (1) facilities for production of basic industrial materials (chiefly petroleum, but also iron, copper, and other materials in demand here and abroad) and (2) manufacturing plants whose products have been sold mainly in foreign markets.
Trump does not have the authority to pick and choose whose products are subject to a stiff tariff. In fact, NAFTA, which is US law, forbids this sort of action. Moreover, even if Trump managed to do so, it would trigger a lose-lose trade war with one of our biggest export markets.What Carrier and Ford are doing is to the benefit of their customers and the market; what Trump is doing is exploiting the many (consumers) to benefit the few, an
economic construct of corruption, namely diffuse costs and concentrated benefits (e.g., blue-collar workers)
Right now, no Republican would dare defy Trump after a victory like Carrier.
Not so.
Here's Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI):
Not the president(-elect)’s job. We live in a constitutional republic, not an autocracy. Business-specific meddling shouldn’t be normalized...When a state does this, I call it corporate welfare and cronyism...It benefits politically connected companies at expense of most residents.
It's hard to know which Mexicans O'Reilly is more annoyed at: "illegal aliens" working as part of the US economy or the Mexicans working at American plants in their native land:
It is quite clear to Talking Points that the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton put the needs of immigrants, some of them here illegally, above the needs of working folks...Meanwhile, the folks out in Indiana and other places were being laid off because corporations wanted to make a few extra bucks by moving to Mexico...Trump is off to a good start with the Carrier deal: Tweet softly, but carry a big stick.
Anyone who thinks Trump tweets "softly" is detached from reality. I have no doubt that Trump was more than willing to use DoD dollars to extort Carrier's parent, United Technologies, a defense contractor. But the parent company got millions in Indiana state concessions while still shifting hundred of jobs from 2 Indiana plants. Only O'Reilly could see that as a "big win" for Trump.
