In the 1990\u2019s America began off-shoring almost our entire industrial footprint.\u00a0 I saw some of that migration first hand.\u00a0 China hired American engineering companies with the technology and experience to build petrochemical synthesis plants.\u00a0 And they built them in pieces, shipped them to remote sites in China and then assembled and even started them up for the Chinese.\u00a0 On their own it would have taken the Chinese generations to learn all the particular technologies and avoid all the hazards in running plants that produce all the myriads of organic materials that the US chemical engineering companies like Dupont pioneered in the early twentieth century.<\/p>\n
And we did it on purpose.<\/p>\n
Now multiply that by the number of other products that we used to make in America and you have an inkling of the betrayal that Wall Street has wreaked on us.\u00a0 And the result is the wreckage that we call the Rust Belt.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not just the Midwest.\u00a0 Every area of the country has been hollowed out.\u00a0 Even the most cutting-edge manufacturing, the most valuable computer chips are made in Taiwan.\u00a0 And it\u2019s even worse than that.\u00a0 Even our food is now imported from Asia and South America.\u00a0 That is how much American businesses hate us.\u00a0 So, if I want to sum the whole thing up, the boardrooms of American business eliminated the American middle class to globalize their operations and minimize their labor costs.<\/p>\n
And reversing this project is what I think is the highest priority of anyone who loves this country and the people who call themselves Americans.\u00a0 It really doesn\u2019t matter to me if the people who work to fix this call themselves Republicans or Democrats.\u00a0 Populist might be the closest thing to a label for the project.\u00a0 Obviously, anyone who is getting most of his income from Wall Street lobbyists and insider trading tips is not on this team.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi or the Bushes.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s Donald Trump.\u00a0 He sounds like he understands some of what\u2019s going on.\u00a0 He talks about tariffs and that\u2019s part of what needs to be looked at.\u00a0 But where I see the tariffs helping is putting them on American companies who try to sell cars and other products made in Mexico and Cananda and elsewhere as if they were \u201cMade in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019re missing about a hundred million good manufacturing jobs in this country.\u00a0 That\u2019s about what it would take to restore the middle class in this country.\u00a0 Of course that will do a lot of damage to China, India, Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s too bad.\u00a0 Charity begins at home.<\/p>\n
On-shoring American manufacturing will take decades.\u00a0 Of course it will.\u00a0 It took forty years to off-shore it.\u00a0 But every step the government takes to worsen the economics of off-shore manufacturing will work to improve the job prospects for our grandchildren.\u00a0 And now is the time for legislation.\u00a0 The Republicans have (slim) majorities in both houses of Congress and a sympathetic president.\u00a0 All that is needed is for Trump to co-opt a few Democrat votes.\u00a0 Who knows, he might even get someone like Bernie Sanders to sign on for some of the votes.<\/p>\n
But the important thing is to prevent this country from turning into a feudal system with the super-rich lording it over a peasant class hanging on by the skin of their teeth.\u00a0 There is still a chance to turn this around.\u00a0 Come on Mr. Trump, to make America great again, you have to resurrect the middle class.\u00a0 Bring back our jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the 1990\u2019s America began off-shoring almost our entire industrial footprint.\u00a0 I saw some of that migration first hand.\u00a0 China hired American engineering companies with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[660,552,5,551,659,6],"tags":[2216,3766,39,16],"class_list":["post-31570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camera-reviews","category-country-music-reviews","category-current-events","category-music-reviews","category-photography-reviews","category-trump","tag-make-america-great-again","tag-off-shoring-manufacturing","tag-populism","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n