Carrier is getting rid of those domestic jobs precisely for the same reason millions have jobs have already left. As a response to government destroying incentives or enacting disincentives that would have kept the jobs here.
You might be right. Trump is an enigma and I doubt he’s the right person for the job to handle the transition to post human labor economy but I don’t think all his motives are evil. Time will tell.
You mean like minimum wage, safe working conditions and not being allowed to dump toxic waste in the river or local vacant lots?
Mostly one. I’m in favor of rational environmental and strong worker safety regulations. I’m also in favor of trade restrictions from countries that don’t follow some reasonable standards with regards to negative externalities.
Really? How many manufacturers make the IPhone? How many make the Mustang?
Anyway, my point being that tariffs on imports hurts consumers in the long run.
Maybe it’s because we don’t have 45 - 90% tariffs on things yet?
n/m. I probably have to think it through more.
You’re off into brand versus product. Brands are… irrelevant.
If you’re sitting in a nice, cool house or office, do you give a damn what brand name is on the A/C system?
That’s one view, yes. But we either have a global economy with few barriers to trade, or we don’t. Trying to selectively block products or product types, usually for political reasons or to prop up a company/region that is no longer competitive, is counterproductive. A widespread and balanced system of tariffs would probably be better than the uncertainty of “free trade” - but such a thing has proven nearly impossible to manage, even in simpler days.
Pence used his office, he is still Governor until he is sworn in as VP, to bribe Carrier to maintain payroll for some unspecified period of time using Indiana tax revenues, which, luckily for him, he doesn’t have to account for, because he is jumping ship.
All so Trump can win a news cycle where he also handed Medicaid and the Treasury Department over to Wall Street.
:mad:
Again IMHO it’s the typical ‘reformed free trader’ juxtaposition of ‘here’s economic reality’, you reformed free traders often still acknowledge it, and ‘but here’s how I’d like things to be’ without a really practical way to bridge that gap.
The Disney example is immigration. There are social implications to immigration. There are issues of public support for immigrants, etc. Immigration is again politically more of a fuel for populism IMO than trade in goods, and anti-trade kind of follows in its wake. But immigration itself is not the same issue as trade in goods, so let’s not get off on that tangent.
The problem suggested by the Ford/Toyota comparison in the same context as Carrier is this. The populists including their leader Trump have specifically made a point of promising to punish/coerce Ford for moving some production to Mexico, and browbeat Ford to back down on that apparently, another ‘success’ for case by case anti-trade populism. But what if Toyota sources more of its sales in North America from Mexico? Under populism it seems that’s somehow morally different because Toyota ‘isn’t an American company’ (whatever that actually means, actually Toyota has one of the higher US sourcing %'s among companies selling cars in the US). Making it about ‘American companies’ clearly detaches the policy from any rationality in an environment where Toyota, (or Daikin in Carrier’s case) can compete in the US by selling products made in Mexico (or China or Vietnam or back in Japan or where ever else).
Again the basic dilemma is that a protectionist (broadly speaking, ‘fair trade’ is just a euphemism when it refers to govt coercion to ‘save jobs’) policy is either trivial cases just for show (Carrier, previous steel stuff under Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama), or else it’s broad based destructive policy, as in really ‘fixing’ the Ford issue, which would be by preventing cars made in Mexico coming into the US, not just cars made by ‘American companies’. There’s no indication or reason to believe there are low hanging economic fruits where you can get a lot of economic gain from a little protectionism. A little protectionism is political theater. A lot will damage the economy. The appeals to morality are just political theater.
But to add, the political theater of a minor protectionist feint could be justified politically if you have actual ideas for economic policies that work economically (tax, regulatory, employment training etc etc, could be right or left if they work economically, protectionism simply won’t). If the protectionist feint is cover for those policies, and it’s fairly minor, OK. Same if the moralizing about capitalism (Ford’s management’s job is to maximize Ford shareholder value, period) is just a show for politics. If it’s taken seriously, bad policy is almost sure to follow.
The thing about all of this is that the politics of it can’t be ignored. People who lose their jobs and maybe eventually their homes don’t care about, or don’t understand, the macro economics. They just want a job similar to what they had. Either you address that in some way, or they will vote to replace you with someone who will, and that someone could very well be someone who will resort to short term feel good solutions that long term make things even worse. People may even vote in a total ignoramus (as we’ve just seen).
How do we address this? Damned if I know.
I’m pretty sure that people do, in fact, care about the brand of the items they buy.
But anyway,
I actually agree with you, so I’m not sure what you and I are arguing about 
Largely if not entirely because they’ve been conditioned to care, often against any factual basis.
/hijack
You doubt that in a vast majority of consumer products, there exists brands that are of better quality than other brands?
Carrier is THE dominant player in the U.S. HVAC market, selling for example about one-third of all new residential gas furnaces and a sixth of new air conditioners. That’s more than can be readily absorbed by the market without significant disruptions and/or price increases.
When a big player suddenly exits the market, what typically happens is shortages, because nobody else is ramped up to fill the gap. Shortages of something in demand = price increases–if you need it now, you will be compelled to spend whatever it takes.
'Cause otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. No free lunch, ya know?
Here’s what United Technologies got (my bold):
Indiana Gives $7 Million in Tax Breaks to Keep Carrier Jobs
Whoa! Eleven dollars per day v. $30 per hour! :eek: No wonder they want to move operations to Mexico. And I’m sure since the items would have been much cheaper to build in Mexico, the lower cost would have been passed onto customers in the form of really low prices.* (Ha! Ha! Good one! I crack myself up sometimes.)*
More on the Carrier deal.
Behind Trump’s Deal With Carrier
My bold.
- Apparently he thinks he’s already the P-word.
Hey, if we’ll take 10 dollars a day, then we will get all those jobs back from Mexico!
Do you know what other nationalist was nice to companies that toed the line and produced jobs for the country?