TRUMP CREATES HIS OWN FREE SHIT ARMY

Trump knows what’s best for the best economy EVER!!! He’s a businessman. Make the Fed keep rates low. When your tariffs backfire, just hand $12 billion we don’t have to farmers as a payoff for their votes in November. Trump isn’t dumb. He’s smart. He deserves respect. He’s a new type of politician that runs massive deficits and tells you the payoff will be down the road, as mega-corps use their windfall tax savings to buy back their stock and create massive wealth for their executives and Wall Street cronies. I hope the average worker is enjoying their 0% real wage gains. Winning!!!! Our Fredo president.

Via ZeroHedge

Facing the brunt of President Trump’s trade war with China, which threatens some $34 billion of US products and agriculture with duties, the White House has announced a $12 billion “short-term” stimulus plan to help US farmers hurt by China’s “illegal” retaliatory tariffs. 

The package, as expected, will consist of direct payments, food purchases and trade development – under a program already authorized under the Commodity Credit Corp act, which means Congressional approval is not required. Further details on the program will come by Labor Day, according to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and top officials.

Earlier in the day, Trump told a Veteran’s group: “This country is doing better than it’s ever done before, economically…It’s all working out. Just remember: what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

As we reported earlier, China’s retaliation against Trump’s tariffs was a lefy on 545 categories of US products, ranging from soybeans, pork, chicken and seafood to sport-utility vehicles and electric vehicles, and as a result of plunging commodity prices, one group emerged as especially hard hit by the administration’s tariffs: farmers.

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst appeared on CBS’ “Face The Nation” warning that: “farmer ranchers are “always the first to be retaliated against” in these types of “trade negotiations,” adding that farmers have been put in “very vulnerable position.”

Meanwhile, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said that “there are real issues in our trade relationship with China that need to be addressed, but Iowa agriculture cannot continue to bear the brunt of the retaliation from our trading partners.”

In short, America’s farmers were getting ever more angry with Trump’s policies.

“Soybeans are the top agriculture export for the United States, and China is the top market for purchasing those exports, The math is simple. You tax soybean exports at 25 percent, and you have serious damage to U.S. farmers.”

Cheese producers were also hard hit, forced to discount their products to keep customers, with many putting orders put on hold and resulting in the biggest cheese inventory in US history.

“We have seen large drops in our dairy product sales prices at all levels,” said Catherine de Ronde, economist for the Agri-Mark Inc. dairy cooperative. “It will create a significant backup of dairy products.”

Not everyone is happy with Trump’s emergency aid.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) slammed the plan in a Tuesday press release, which reads:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today released the following statement regarding reports that the Trump administration is considering offering $12 billion in farm aid to ease the impact of tariffs recently implemented by the administration.

I am glad that the administration finally seems to understand that the Trump-Pence tariffs are hurting the American people,” said Corker.

These tariffs are a massive tax increase on American consumers and businesses, and instead of offering welfare to farmers to solve a problem they themselves created, the administration should reverse course and end this incoherent policy. We will continue to push for a binding vote here in Congress to reassert our onstitutional role on national security-designated tariffs.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Di43dElX4AAfJy_.jpg?itok=lpuszLBb

And responding to earlier reports of Trump’s $12 billion stimulus plan, Senator Bob Sasse (R-NE) said that the Trump administration was “going to make it 1929 again.”

The Nebraska senator said that Trump’s trade war is “cutting the legs out from under farmers,” and that the White House will now “spend $12 billion on gold crutches.”

“America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose – they want to win by feeding the world,” Sasse said in a statement. “This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”

***

As we noted earlier, under the White House plan, the money will be disbursed in at least three ways, coming through direct assistance, a food purchase and distribution program, and a trade promotion program.

The plan, which has been in the works for months, seeks to ensure U.S. farmers and ranchers — a key constituency for President Donald Trump and Republicans — don’t bear the brunt of an escalating trade fight with China, the European Union and other major economies.

Trump, back in April, directed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to devise a plan to mitigate any financial damage to U.S. agricultural producers’ bottom lines that could result from the ongoing trade battles. But the administration has so far offered few details on the amount of aid that would be provided and how it would be distributed.

And since subsidies are merely another facet of trade warfare, expect China – which has also revealed similar subsidies to its own exporters – and especially Europe, to respond in kind shortly, as the tit-for-tat global trade war continues.

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62 Comments
AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  Administrator
July 25, 2018 7:15 am

Rand Paul is not his father.

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  Administrator
July 25, 2018 7:20 am

Nice globalist point of view. Tariffs were the original source of revenue for the US federal government. Now, it would be a toss up between confiscation and borrowing which is the biggest source.

Even supporters of taxes acknowledge they are a means of behavior modification. So, I suppose you can lump tariffs, taxes, and subsidies all in the same basket. One is inherently no more or less evil than the other.

John
John
July 24, 2018 6:06 pm

“…He’s a new type of politician that runs massive deficits and tells you the payoff will be down the road…”

Nothing new about it. Sounds like Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace and the many “new deal” boondoggles from 80 years ago:

“The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was peculiarly Wallace’s child and it contributed
as much as the NRA to bringing discredit and even laughter down upon the Roosevelt administration… A distinction must be drawn between the philosophy of many men who rush to strange and bizarre experiments in economic life and the philosophy of the modern Communist or Socialist…

[Wallace] became slowly infected by the far abler Rex Tugwell with the theory of State Planning for the well-being of all the people. It is equally clear that he did not perceive at this time the essential affinity between state planning, fascism and communism. He did not realize that all belong to one great generic philosophy…”

“Nothing has confused so perfectly the critics of Mr. Roosevelt’s various New Deals as their obscurity about the meaning of a lot of words such as Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Liberal, Conservative and so on… ‘Planned Society’ is just a soft, misleading name for a society part capitalist and part socialist, run by a dictatorship of the experts.”

From “The Roosevelt Myth” by John T. Flynn (1948)

https://mises.org/library/roosevelt-myth

Wiptastic
Wiptastic
  John
July 24, 2018 6:47 pm

Admin was being sarcastic concerning your first sentence. New here?

Gilnut
Gilnut
July 24, 2018 6:12 pm

ZH stopped being a legit site when they sold out circa 2012 (actually before that but the Tyler’s hung around for a while). I view ZH the same way as I do Drudge….it’s not what it used to be.

The best thing about ZH was that I found TBP through their blogroll, which hasn’t been updated since that same timeframe (2012-ish). Beware corporatized media.

Just my 2 (non)cents.

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs
July 24, 2018 6:24 pm

I intended to make a point about this topic a year ago but we have so many good topics I forgot.
It seemed at the time that we were at the beginning of a new wealth transfer system whereby Trump and the Faux-con Repos starve out the Demo welfare programs and replace them with Republican trough sloppers. Not that that is a new species, just increase their population with a fertility seeding program. All those bullshit jobs at the EPA etc. will be replaced with REPORKFARE.
Just thinkin out loud.

Work-In-Progress
Work-In-Progress
  Fleabaggs
July 24, 2018 10:54 pm

You’re probably correct unless Q is right and Trump is different.

Eric the Red
Eric the Red
July 24, 2018 6:27 pm

Stupidest thing i have read today. We have been bailing out farmers for years. Trump actually wanted to dial back the funding. This funding now comes from a bill passed in 2014.

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Eric the Red
July 24, 2018 6:48 pm

[imgcomment image[/img]

You a Norseman? Me too.

Wip

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  Administrator
July 25, 2018 7:22 am

Wrong side of the bed? No, wait, work suck?

Please, please Mr. Admin, don’t censor me, please!

PlatoPlubius
PlatoPlubius
July 24, 2018 8:03 pm

It seems everything is peachy for the elite fuckers who created this mess with the repealing of glass Steagall, mark to market peakaboo account gimmicks and derivatives and high frequency algorithmic trading bullshit…Neo feudal state?

An excerpt from this article by John Rubino

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-24/third-world-america-bottom-half-bolsters-economy-going-debt

The data shows the rise in median expenditures has outpaced before-tax income for the lower 40 percent of earners in the five years to mid-2017 while the upper half has increased its financial cushion, deepening income disparities.

[imgcomment image?itok=1JiVHdRC[/img]

It is this recovery’s paradox.

BL
BL
  PlatoPlubius
July 24, 2018 9:57 pm

Anyone know how the government paid the bills and kept the lights on prior to 1913 when we got the personal income tax and the FED printing worthless toilet paper fiat?

Rdawg
Rdawg
  BL
July 24, 2018 10:16 pm

Uh, by spending within its means?

BL
BL
  Rdawg
July 24, 2018 10:26 pm

Well in a way Dawg, back then tariffs were one of the ways .gov paid the bills. That kept government small as there was no big need for the bloated mess we have now to keep up with the IRS and every other unneeded alphabet agency which unfortunately employs one fifth of the population. Tariffs helped pay the bills in large.

Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson
July 24, 2018 8:10 pm

probably to keep subsidizing corn for ethanol and HFCS. Same bullshit as usual.

Todd H.
Todd H.
July 24, 2018 8:19 pm

Are we talking about small family farmers or corporate agribusiness? Maybe Monsanto or ConAgra, et al threatened to cut campaign contributions to Republicans this year and fund Democrat campaigns instead? All of these Midwestern senators (Sasse, Ernst, etc.) are basically on Big Ag’s payroll and really don’t give a shit about American Gothic-esque farmers (what few are left).

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs
July 24, 2018 8:34 pm

Shut up and trust the plan.

CCRider
CCRider
July 24, 2018 8:39 pm

When you pick winners and losers you piss off the losers. Due to the unfortunate fact that you can’t legislate wealth creation we all wind up as losers. But that never stopped government in the past.

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  Administrator
July 25, 2018 7:23 am

Boo hoo, they should be buying American Steel. More tariffs, please!

Grog
Grog
  AlphaDelta
July 25, 2018 9:24 am

“… should be buying American Steel.”

You must be absolutely salivating for the return of the 1991 luxury tax, it worked out so well.
Tariffs and other forms of ad valorem taxes “deemed necessary” are still a form of theft and coercion.

“No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately becomes the right of the strongest… Nor can a group of men, by contract, from their own right, compel you to obey a fellow-man. What binding force is there for me in the allegation that ages ago one of my progenitors made a ‘Contrat Social,’ with other men of that time? Abraham Kuyper

Some man’s come he’s trying to run my life, don’t know what he’s asking
Working starts to make me wonder where fruits of what I do are going
When he says in love and war all is fair, he’s got cards he ain’t showing…
He can’t even run his own life,
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine

Lgr
Lgr
  Grog
July 25, 2018 10:40 am

Good choice of lyrics to quote, Groggy. Good to see you commenting again, too.
Good sense of humor, which many advocate.

Taxation is Theft
Taxation is Theft
  AlphaDelta
July 25, 2018 10:56 am

Mr. Majestek had the perfect response for your type telling the rest of us who we *should* be doing business with. Comments like yours remind me why violence sometimes IS the answer.

ottomatik
ottomatik
July 24, 2018 9:40 pm

Is it me or is everybody pretending the Chinese Communist Party does not control 100% of all the economic activity of the 2nd largest economy on Earth.
And your panties get in a bunch over 12 billion to people that feed you.
Clearly the Chinks are attacking Trumps base as reprisal, fuck em, starve bitchez.
And quit buying their fuckin plastic shit.

newrouter
newrouter
July 24, 2018 9:44 pm

“speak loudly and carry a big stick” words that scare libertardians

Rdawg
Rdawg
  newrouter
July 24, 2018 10:18 pm

Doesn’t scare me. I’ve not seen a stick yet that could fend off 230 grains at 850 feet per second.

llpoh
llpoh
July 24, 2018 10:56 pm

Admin gets it. Lots of others, not so much.

My biz has incurred increases in the order of 10% on materials so far. We can handle it, but some companies are going to the wall already.

Tariffs will cause immediate pain, and are doing so already. Sales will be immediately lost. Any increases in sales will happen further down the road – much further down the road – if at all. Capacity cannot be created at the snap of fingers – it requires capital investment, tooling creation, supply network development, etc., and can take years to achieve. In the meantime, overall world consumption will drop if prices increase.

US exports will drop. That is already happening. For instance, the Chinese will voluntarily stop buying American-made, with or without tariffs. They are more easily convinced to do so voluntarily than are stupid Americans.

Any voids in supply may go to others, like perhaps Germany, etc., as opposed to being filled by US based corporations.

I do not know for certain if tariffs would help in the long run – I doubt it. But the pain in the short run will be severe, and there will be incredible unintended consequence.

I am beginning to think Trump WANTS to send the US bankrupt ASAP. He is showing zero concern for deficits and debt. The deficits he is running up, and is going to run up, will be unbelievable by the look of it, and I think he may well make Obama look like an amateur in deficit creation. I would not be surprised to see US deficits hit $2 trillion a year. At that rate, a declaration of bankruptcy, or runaway inflation, will be likely and rapid.

The issue is not now, and has never been, one of tax receipts. It has always been one of excess expenditure.

Hey, what is $12 billion in the scheme of things.

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  llpoh
July 25, 2018 7:25 am

Admin doesn’t get it… there, I fixed it for you. Don’t you have a roo to round up for dinner, or something?

Llpoh
Llpoh
  AlphaDelta
July 25, 2018 7:39 am

Adhd – you are obviously a fucking imbecile. Quit shitting in the site.

Grog
Grog
  Llpoh
July 25, 2018 9:28 am

You mean like Alpha Delta Delta, ADD?

Todd H.
Todd H.
July 24, 2018 11:10 pm

The public sector’s deficit is the private sector’s surplus. It’s an accounting identity. If the government ran a balanced budget or a surplus, nobody here would like the results. Unless, of course, you are a banker who would seize foreclosed property. But we need a shift of taxes off of labor and profit and on to unearned income (capital gains, interest, dividends, rents, monopolies, etc.) Without that shift, we will continue our progression towards a society split between feudal warlords (the rentier 1% who don’t do a god damn productive thing) and dirt poor serfs.

BH
BH
July 24, 2018 11:16 pm

Oh boo hoo! Trump is spending all of USA Inc’s fake money on infrastructure, military, and food production.

Monetarily, the country is worse than bankrupt. What better uses of fiat gravy does he have?

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  BH
July 25, 2018 7:26 am

Bombing the shit out of a piece of dirt in Syria, and Afghanistan!

BUCKHED
BUCKHED
July 24, 2018 11:24 pm

Otto…the Chinks are feeding Americans…..they bought Smithfield foods. I don’t buy a damn thing from those slant eyed bastards.

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  BUCKHED
July 25, 2018 7:28 am

Smithfield pork is actually pretty good. Those chink investments can be reversed pretty quickly in the event of hostilities. In the event of a globalist utopia, we have bigger problems.

Ottomatik
Ottomatik
  BUCKHED
July 25, 2018 10:46 am

Buck- That was 4(?) years ago and I have not bought Smithfield since. We are close to not needing to buy any Industrial Ag products, amazing what you can buy from your neighbors if you ask and look around, go to local farmer markets, at least here in the west.

JustTruth
JustTruth
July 24, 2018 11:56 pm

Tariffs all around: On China (increase prices to US consumers), on US farmers ( now can’t sell products to China) and now $12 billion from US Taxpayers. Marvelous. Is this “winning”? Looks like good ole mid term election politicking to me. Lipstick on the pig?

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  JustTruth
July 25, 2018 7:29 am

Which would be the case if DJT had done nothing else in his 1.5 yrs in office.

AnarchoPagan
AnarchoPagan
July 25, 2018 3:03 am

I used to be a free trade absolutist, knew all the arguments, until I started thinking about group evolutionary conflict and wondering if economic warfare is a real possibility. Does the ChiCom party really care if “their” people suffer a diminished standard of living, if in the process they can gut our economic base? After an industry or sector is destroyed, it’s not easily rebuilt. On the other hand, I can easily see the immorality of taxing a large group of consumers to benefit a small group of producers. Don’t see any easy answers, just saying maybe there’s an argument to be made for both sides.

AlphaDelta
AlphaDelta
  AnarchoPagan
July 25, 2018 7:34 am

The ChiCom party only cares about staying in power, remember Tiananmen Square? They have a lot more to lose than the US. In fact, you can argue we have nothing more to lose, except the status quo, considering the hollowing out of middle america.

It would only take the political will and social mindset that turned the US into a war making machine during WWII to rebuild American Industry. Fat and lazy can be corrected in a generation.

There are any easy answers, just right and wrong.

Llpoh
Llpoh
  AlphaDelta
July 25, 2018 7:45 am

Seriously, Adhd – you are a moron. There will be no rebuilding of US industry, at least not a rebuilding that will actually employ folks. Those days are gone. Automation is now such that manufacturing can largely do without them, and each year the same number of widgets can be made with around 2.5% fewer workers. Mfg as a percentage of gdp has remained largely unchanged, while percentage of population working in manufacturing has plummetted from around fifty percent to around 10 percent. How is this possible? Compound interest – each year the same number of widgets made by 2.5% fewer employees, compounding endlessly.

Ottomatik
Ottomatik
  Llpoh
July 25, 2018 10:49 am

Lloph- We will need many techs to set up, run, administer the bots, further we will need many to help export the bots to others behind the curve.
Yea! Bots!

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 7:36 am

Subsidies- government handouts- are for Industrial Agriculture, not farmers.

Farming is a completely different animal from the organizations that are the focus of the USDA.

One is a holistic management predicated on maximizing the natural systems and cycles for the benefit of families and the local environment and the other is a form of environmental strip mining for the benefit of global corporations and consumers. The only thing that they have in common is that they both use living things- one as an integral part of a natural process, the other as a marketable commodity of industrial production.

One cares about the future and the other doesn’t even consider it.

BL
BL
  hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 8:04 am

HF- One of the largest pork processing companies in this area is owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation.
They would benefit from this program and let us not forget that China owns 28 million acres of American farmland, so I’m guessing DT signed them up in the new FSA. Sad as China is the cause of the tariffs in the first place.

Llpoh
Llpoh
  BL
July 25, 2018 8:09 am

If China figures out a way to ship that farmland back to China, that will be trouble.

BL
BL
  Llpoh
July 25, 2018 11:01 am

Llpoh

China has a huge chunk of the planet’s population, and only 8% of the world’s arable land. They can’t feed their growing population so they are buying our farm land and one would surmise that they intend to send the food back to china .

28 million acres is not a cheese sammich Loopey, our government is selling us out in every way possible.

Llpoh
Llpoh
  BL
July 25, 2018 2:44 pm

So China has 28 million acres of farmland, out of 470 million arable acres of farmland in the US. How will the US ever survive!!!!

Plus, they cannot take the fucking land. Plus at the stroke of a pen the export of the food off those acres can be stopped.

It is a red herring. It is of zero consequence in the scheme of things. China has too many people and too little farmland, though they have a hell of a lot of it – similar acres to the US, depending on what source of data used. The US will be a major, major, major exporter of food going forward. So will be Australia, for that matter, but not to the extent of the US.

That China owns 6% of US farmland is of little consequenece, though I personally would not permit is. As I said, they cannot move it to China.

James
James
July 25, 2018 7:55 am

End all the corporate and personal welfare(including me damn property taxes paying for kids re-education,the kids I choose not to have!).

Someone mentioned Trump trying to bankrupt the US,we are as far as the books go already bankrupt,thing is we are not alone by any means!So,titanic has hit the ice tray,perhaps by going the bankrupt route first we are long term the country better off as we got in the life boats first,just a thought.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 9:47 am

Calling it a FSA is misleading in the extreme. This benefits a number of people so small as to equate to a Free Shit Battalion.

As I’ve pointed out in the past the USDA benefits virtually no farmers and is focused almost exclusively on AgriCorps. I would be shocked if that actual number amounts to more than 1/10 of 1% of the population.

The reason this is being done is because that small number of big operators keeps the spigot of empty calories open to the majority of the population. Those who buy their food locally or at farmer’s markets account for an almost invisible fraction of the public. Even fewer are the producers of that food. If people were suddenly faced with sourcing out nourishment at actual production prices there would be rioting in the streets.

Ottomatik
Ottomatik
  hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 11:10 am

HSF-
Accurately gageing the conditions has always been a hallmark of your comments, and I agree with all of your points. That said, we cannot get from here to there with any rapidity, it will be Madmaxian. We need people to awaken slowly to the absolute shit their food has become and gradually ween ourselves, as a country off of the garbage.
I grew up in corn country and have been hearing rumors of the carnage lately, granted the carnage is focused on what you or I would consider Industrial Ag, but after the 80’s that is what mom and pop farmers are, to survive.
In the grand scheme, I support Trumps attempt to reconcile what I perceive as a massive deleterious trade imbalance with an authoritarian regime that promises to continue to degrade our sovereignty and quality of life. It is not going to be easy, we are far down the hole, and I can’t say his methodology is best, but he is the first to step up and work on it.

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs
  hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 1:07 pm

Hsf..
Talk about a conspiracy. Agribusiness and the subsidies, tax codes and labor laws that go with it have made price discovery of food nearly impossible. It also distorts the prices of local food with obscene prices for small parcels.
As you said “there would be rioting. The Banksters love big Agri because everything is quantifiable and growers operate on loans.

Ottomatik
Ottomatik
  hardscrabble farmer
July 25, 2018 8:13 pm

HSF-
Yes we can, and honestly I have seen more resurgence of the attitude recently than I have in decades, aquaponics(thank you), backyard chickens, gardens, have all made signifigant headway. It is possible to raise a tremendous amount of healthy food in your average suburban lot, with available technology and effort. Also, the amount of water, energy, and feed, needed for this food production is already being deployed for aesthetics.
A shift in culture is the only missing ingredient.
I dream of an America where people OWN their home, and largely feed themselves, cornerstones of the American dream, essential to a free people.
Or, like you say, be fed shit by a tightly controlled 2% and prolly the same number actually own their home, will produce guaranteed serfs and a powerful rentier class. Ideal neofudal conditions most are conditioned to smile about.

Penforce
Penforce
July 25, 2018 12:49 pm

HSF, there is no disagreement here that we have left the agrarian plane. How do we return to those things you speak of? Who is going to move back onto an acreage and begin producing food for themselves and others? My family raises a good share of our calories and have done so for as long as any of us can remember. The children help in the garden, help with harvest and with the livestock. They don’t yet understand how much they know because they have yet to realize how much they and we do. Most people I know recognize half a dozen plants and half of those are flowers. We, like you, rant about the way food is grown, processed, packaged and sold, but I don’t see any change unless it is brought on by a collapse.

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer
  Penforce
July 25, 2018 5:05 pm

This is the reason I began to comment at all.
There is a perception that any kind of alteration in our course, both as a society and as a species is dependent upon leaving everything that we have done previously in the past. Progress means not only moving forward technologically and but with increasing complexity. It doesn’t mean we have to abandon agrarian lifestyles and simplicity as well. Too many people were deliberately pushed out of food production, the single most important and long lasting human endeavor in human history, in order to work in an industrial and increasingly a post industrial sphere and earn “money” with which to purchase our sustenance. It’s not much different than people having children and then giving them away to be raised in factories to increase efficiency and reduce the cost of making replacement generations. They’re already pushing us in that direction with year round school and daycare that starts in infancy. Being human widgets hasn’t improved our lives or eliminated the other problems associated with being human and committing to an ever divergent path from our basic purpose seems, as the elites would say, problematic.

We can go back again to a neo-agrarian lifestyle. Maybe not everyone, but a lot more than the 2 or 3% that currently are involved in agriculture- and by that I mean diversified family farming, not industrial agriculture.

BUCKHED
BUCKHED
July 26, 2018 12:50 am

LLPOH……I disagree on rebuilding…at least at this point . In Charleston both Mercedes and Volvo have built new plants that will employ several thousand folks. That doesn’t cover the labor that will be hired at the plants that will supply both companies.
I went to work for a new company that is transferring their business from India to the USA . The initial investment is 100 million and will employ 250 people in the next year . The plan is to build two more plants at 100 million in investment capital . The total employment will reach a peak of 900 employees .

This is of course solely dependent upon the great reset never happening .

Llpoh
Llpoh
  BUCKHED
July 26, 2018 1:55 am

Buck – that indicates investment of $300 billion per million employees. Ten million would be $3 trillion. And ten million is but 7% of the US workforce. As I said, mfg as a big employer is not coming back. Plus even if the $3 trillion is spent – it will not be – the ten million new employees would then drop by 250,000 each year as other automation kicked in.

Llpoh
Llpoh
July 26, 2018 5:15 am

Buck – another way to look at it is this. Big corps want $500k in sales per employee, or 2 million employees per trillion in sales. Mfg is curently around $2 trillion total. To increase mfg by $1 trillion would be a 50% increase. Or 2 million workers out of a workforce of 175 million or so. So even if it is 4 million employee increase, it is very small change, and would give total employees in mfg of around 15 million.

Compare that to the nineteen fifties, when assuming a constant population, manufacturing employees would have been around 80 million. Around 10 million today, around 80 million equivalent back then. Not good. And not reversable.

Manufacturing simply is not coming back. Even if mfg gdp increases 50%,it will create relatively few jobs, and those jobs will dwingle by 2.5% a year, or perhaps a million evry 3 years. In a decade all the gains will be eaten by automation. And then they will keep falling.