Why does his American Jobs Plan remind me of a used car salesman pitch?
Biden visited Dearborn Michigan Ford Plant on May 18, 2021 and gave a speech which I would love to become a reality for USA Manufacturing to return to the USA.
For example, the following statements made about the semiconductor shortage causing auto assembly plants in USA to shut down, he stated,
“Right now, China is leading in this race. Make no bones about it, it’s a fact,” he said. “The future is going to be determined by the best minds in the world, by those who break through new barriers.”
“Never again should we be in the situation we face today with semiconductor shortages: The United States – we can’t manufacture semi-conductors. We were the beginning.”
(The USA at one time produced 62 percent of global semiconductors compared to 12 percent now after USA manufacturers massive outsourcing polices occurred and Obama stated the USA manufacturing is dead in the USA, we are a now a service economy)
“The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America – a blue-collar blueprint to build America. (Applause.) And we need automakers and other companies to keep investing here in America and not take the benefits of our public investments and expand electric vehicles and battery manufacturing production abroad.
“And here’s the deal, Guess what? And Representative Kildee knows: I’m not letting a single contract to a single company that does not hire Americans, have all American parts, and has a supply chain that is an American product supply chain. (Applause.)”
The Purpose of This Post
Is to relate an ancient proverb, an idiom, and my opinion of the above statements remind me of a used car salesman pitch to sell another massive spending plan, which will be similar to buying a lemon used car experience to the USA economy.
King Solomon
If you find honey, eat just enough– too much of it, and you will vomit. (proverb 25:16)
Surely you need guidance to wage war, and victory is won through many advisers (Proverb 24:6)
Idiom
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”– Saint Francis
What’s My Point?
Anyone with manufacturing experience knows it takes time to procure plant, machinery, raw materials tools, and people skills in order to manufacture a widget.
Every economist knows if you have limited products or raw materials, and excessive demand for a product, the price will increase.
My point is passing legislation to print massive amounts of dollars into consumers or producers’ hands in a short time period will lead to inflation, which is now occurring in the USA from the last government stimulus payments to consumers. Presently, the majority of consumer items are imported, so the stimulus benefits goods importer countries workers instead of USA workers.
Add to the fact that the majority of machines needed to produce goods are no longer manufactured in the USA, the machinery needed to build components for wind power, solar panels, will take years to procure.
Add to the fact that batteries require raw materials such as lithium, which requires new investments in mining sites to be located in USA and plants and workers trained in skills to manufacture batteries.
My point is President Biden will find out that it is easier to say that “I’m not letting a single contract to a single company that does not hire Americans, have all American parts, and has a supply chain that is an American product supply chain. (Applause.)”
In My Opinion
What is needed is a long-range goal to return manufacturing to the USA. Printing money in trillions of dollars will only create demand and inflation. For example, what I personal set to buy only 50 percent from foreign sources or the plans of Warren Buffett to balance trade made in 2003 to Congress.
Politicians have limited experience in manufacturing and making plans without doing ““Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
In my opinion, outsourcing manufacturing by USA companies began over 40 years ago and any plans will take a long time to return to the USA. Taxing USA manufactures penalty’s as is the resent plans by the present administration will not. Instead, the manufacturers will pass the added government taxes cost to the prices to be paid to imported products which will further lead to inflation.
You Decide
Will massively spending Bills and taxation return manufacturing to the USA without a long-range plan with goals, timelines, and manufactures agreements made in advance to prevent what is occurring now in auto plants, shortages of chips leading to layoffs in assembly plants, and used car prices surging creating inflations, in the future.
Presently, Intel is planning massive funding to build plants in other countries to supply chips in USA and world. Should President Biden be talking to them now to build more plants in the USA. And instead to make his political promises reality instead of selling us a previously used political promise that will turn out to be a lemon causing more inflation and constantly breaking down manufacturing because of shortages experiencing now in auto plants. And in PPE equipment doting the pandemic when it was realized that 90 percent of medical supplies are imported and led to shortages and inflated prices?
If Interested
Read a previous post titled: President’s Green Energy Truth? and Intel plans in the Source links below.
Source Links
C Span President Bidens Speech
https://www.c-span.org/video/?511860-1/president-biden-remarks-ford-rogue-electric-vehicle-center
President’s Green Energy Truth
President’s Green Energy Truth? King Solomon Blog – Rudy u Martinka (rudymartinka.com)
Intel Plans in Arizona and Israel
Intel is spending $20 billion to build two new chip plants in Arizona (cnbc.com)
Breitbart – China Owned American Battery Companies
Rudy u Martinka 
Your background lends to your making some good points here in that any transition of some level of the economy would never happen overnight. Biden’s rah-rah can be interpreted as any politician’s sales pitch for improving a segment of society. On the other hand.. transitional change has to start somewhere in spite of how slow the evolution might be.
On a political note.. one of the “but look at all the good he’s done” blathering about Trump’s imagined “accomplishments” included a similar “promise” of bringing manufacturing back to America again. Your argument works both ways… but at least is seems on the surface that ReTrumplicans and Dems are in some level of agreement. But we both know, that can’t be possible.
Yet being a (former) old school Republican I tend to appreciate free market competition.. which should extend globally because the days are long gone where the rest of the world buys from the U.S. because we are the only game in town manufacturing stuff. We now live in a competitive world where economic protectionism simply cannot rule our economy. If the U.S. builds a domestic widget for domestic sales (thus restraining offshore imports) and China builds their version of the same widget for global sales… the U.S. widget simply could not match the competition from China for global business. Should we care about global competition when domestic sales of widgets is doing good? No one globally will want a U.S. widget because it cost more than the China widget to produce, largely due to labor costs. Domestically.. whoppee… Americans are making and consuming their own widgets, employing people up and down that distribution network. But as we know.. sales do generally peak (unless widgets are a consumable staple).
BUT… we DO need to establish a domestic security and defense element to having some level of domestic production of critical items for use in national defense and national emergencies. Maybe it’s a combination of domestic manufacturing capability AND stockpiling from foreign sources those things needed that do not have a shelf life and can languish in warehouses.
It’s not an easy fix… it’s not an overnight fix. If anything started this year you and I won’t even be around to see it’s effect a generation from now.
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Doug,
Thanks for your comment.
I do not disagree with your comments that it is “not easy fix.”
Before Trump, Obama and Biden claimed manufacturing would never return to the USA, and a service economy was the future of the USA.
Meanwhile China built infrastructure, plants and worker skills while the USA became dependent and in fact servitude to the power accumulated by China by their long-range planning and currency manipulations
Biden plans will jumpstart inflation in my opinion and taxing manufacturers higher taxes instead of incentives to return manufacturing will add fuel to inflation
When Biden finds out that it is impossible to buy American to supply US military and Federal contract needs for domestic infrastructure, his plans will change to empty suit political promises and the end result is his rhetoric will result in words instead of actions while at the same time pent up dollars chasing too few supplies will be inflation which affects mainly savers of US dollars, mainly older returned folks who are hurt most by inflation..
Sad.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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I encourage you to check out this 2014 USNews article… and don’t be dismayed by the title. Keep in mind that the stats included might have changed a tad in the last 7 years, but it’s not influenced with the current politics and divide proliferating on the scene now.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/02/13/american-manufacturing-jobs-are-a-thing-of-the-past
This article on the NPR site is from 2012….
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/10/17/163074704/manufacturing-jobs-arent-coming-back-no-matter-whos-president
But here’s to the greater point…. check out this Obama Youtube… from June 1, 2016… right before the Trump win… at NO time does Obama suggest “manufacturing will never return”.
You keep pushing the loss of manufacturing is due to jobs going overseas.. and I’ve said in the past with you.. automation has been the culprit in the majority of American job loss.
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Doug,
The automation only applies to very high quantity widgets, not the majority of products which require labor intensive widgets.
The tooling and engineering costs to convert a widget to be made by automation is very high and has to be justified by widget needed in high quantity.
Obamas claim that more manufacturing does not agree with the charts in the article you recommended.
When people use percentages as a measure after the total breakdown period when Obama entered office, it distorts reality.
The main need for manufacturing capacity in a country is trade balances which Warren Buffett pointed out in 2003 plus national security of being able to produce needs in case of global despots controlling the USA.
For example, our military cannot buy a plane part manufactured and engineered in another Nation.
Granted a local manufactured washing machines, computers, even clothing costs smore because of higher wages which workers need to live in the USA instead of many other countries, but how many washing machines are needed in a family purchase a year.
The tradeoff is workers in USA not being paid livable wage jobs is average workers having to pay higher taxes which just compounds social problems in USA.
Sad.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Well, of course the entire economy does not function in a vacuum as it dictates everything in life. Which is one of my points that there will be no changes quickly… and we cannot solve a general economic “problem” with a universal fix across all forms of industry as each has their own variables.. and requirements.
One of the concerns I have that isn’t often a public issue because the political agenda is to bad-mouth this since Eisenhower warned of it.. but the military industrial complex. If we want a strong military then we need this “complex”, and not only that, we need to sustain that base even in times where there’s no huge contracts. We can certainly make every effort to contain their lobbying as it relates to the allegations that “they” just feed the wars for a profit. If that’s the case then take ’em to court. Seems anything other than that is just another conspiracy theory.
Regarding the other aspect of globalization vs domestic output…. I see nothing “wrong” in doing something like mandating American firms doing manufacturing business overseas must have a percentage of their manufacturing capability in certain critical industries represented here in the U.S. I don’t know what that magic percentage would be.. maybe 25%, maybe 35%. In that way we are assured of a strategic base in the event of a national disaster or strategic emergency. Although that could easily end up with business “ownership” then going elsewhere.. but maybe with some incentives it could work. We also retain some jobs that would otherwise go global.
I also think it’s a good idea to start including Canada and Mexico into our domestic preparedness. As we have seen with the pandemic… a disease knows no political boundaries and our North American population interacts way too much to just have everyone doing their own thing.. like the idiocy that was allowed with the states all meeting this according to politics.
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Doug,
Yes, as you stated, “domestic preparedness” reminds me of a simple common-sense motto of the boy scouts I taught to hundreds of boy scouts.
Be prepared.
Obviously, our political leaders were never taught the common sense of the need to be prepared based on how we never seem to do any planning in Congress until a crisis occurs.
Sad.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Yeah.. I was in Scouting for most my pre-adult life from Cub to Explorer… and then for a while with my kids. Was five merit badges short of Eagle.
But yes… there’s a lot in politics and government to be sad about these days.. but the plus side of that… we are all still here and able to look at it all and, in fact, be sad.
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Reblogged this on Citizen Tom and commented:
Rudy has an excellent post here, but I think — because Biden never addresses it — Rudy misses the moral problems of trade with China. China is run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP is a bunch of very bad people.
Instead, Rudy focuses on the practical problem of bringing manufacturing back to the USA. If our government would get out the way, I think the change Rudy wants would happen relatively quickly.
The first thing to keep in mind is that global warming is a hoax. Therefore, we don’t have to waste billions and billions on useless technology. Even if global warming was real, electric cars, solar panels, wind mills, and batteries don’t solve the problem. We need an efficient energy source. If solar panels and wind mills worked well enough, huge government subsidies would not be necessary to make them competitive. Moreover, manufacturing wind mills, solar panels, and batteries just creates a different kinds of pollution problems that are quite real.
To produce modern solid state electronics, for example, requires us to mine rare earths. We use to do that in the USA. Then the EPA shut it down. So, now they mine rare earths in China. The CCP wants the money and the power. They don’t give a damn about pollution (or slave labor).
We should not be buying our stuff from CCP run industries. Trump’s tariffs worked, and we need to do our best to use such tariffs to target at least three things.
— Chinese and American companies who cooperate with the CCP in enslavement of people. Slave labor, in particular, is something we need to discourage anyway we can.
— Pollution. If the Chinese produce something that pollutes the environment, we should tax that product.
— Government subsidies. If the CCP subsidizes a product, we should collect that subsidy as a tax.
The point is that we need to protect American businesses from unfair competition, and we need to prevent ourselves from being used in the enslavement of other human beings. So, write your congressman and your senators. We each need to make it clear that even if our president does not care whether the people running China are corrupt and dangerous, we do.
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Tom,
Thanks for the reblog and comments which adds another perspective to the folly of offshoring manufacturing to obtain cheaper prices for vital products.
What has occurred is we have offshored USA wealth at the expense of security, liberty, and ability for families to earn a livable wage using skills obtained in manufacturing.
One of the biggest follies in offshoring is the loss of skills of workers who learn and pass on these skills from the knowledge they obtain while using these skills.
Once a skilled worker retires and does not pass on their skills and knowledge to younger workers, the future of a Nation becomes even more dependence, the opposite of which our founders’ risk and fought for to found our Nation.
Sad.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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