Who Really Wants to Defend Dumping as a Trade Practice?

Here's the simple recipe for building your country's economy at the expense of another:

Stir in subsidies to your steel and aluminum plants.

Dump the product on other countries.

Wait as you watch that other country, fearing retaliation, do nothing.

Fold that other country's steel and aluminum plants out of business.  Forever.

Raise prices after your competition is gone.



Dumping is unfair trade.  Always.

Given a level playing field and fair trade, our steel and aluminum plants can compete.

Tariffs are a tool in the fair trade business that sometimes need to be deployed to level the playing field and take the long term view.  President Trump is using the pragmatic tools of negotiation.

In the long-term, the consumer benefits from fair prices (albeit not subsidized in the short term) and our country retains the ability to domestically provide an absolutely essential ingredient for national defense--metal making.

I can defend pragmatic tariffs.  Who really wants to defend dumping?

Necessary Immigration

Andrew Alfred Baker, circa 1909

My great grandfather was born in Germany in 1876.  He came with his mother and sisters to America in 1884, finding his way to Cleveland.

He would go on to join the infantry in the Spanish-American War, become a draftsman working for manufacturers, and raise a family in Northeast Ohio.

Then, the country needed immigrants like Andrew Baker.  It's hard to imagine the industrial revolution happening in the U.S. and in Ohio in particular without a major influx of immigrants.

We need immigration now too. Pragmatism needs to win out if we are to experience the 21st Century version of industrial revolution.

Thus, President Trump faces what Joel Kotkin calls "The Immigration Dilemma."  Kotkin writes:

"Like most high-income countries, the United States’ fertility rate is below that needed to replace the current generation. If the U.S. cuts off its flow of immigrants too dramatically, we will soon face the labor shortages, collapse of consumer demand and drops in innovation already seen in the European Union and much of East Asia."

Without immigration in the mix of our population growth, we could struggle to grow our economy at a time when the shrinking working age populations of Germany, Japan, China, and the EU are giving our country a chance to grow.

See the whole Kotkin piece at JoelKotkin.com.

Pragmatic Perspective on Oval Office Occupant

Tomorrow's inauguration of our 45th President of the United States is on my mind like it is, of course, the minds of many people.  My thinking has been the same since the election in November.  A pragmatic perspective is from where I come.

That perspective was put to the test on election day and ever since.

I was in Europe on an economic development recruitment mission during the week of the November election.  In fact, I was in Milan heading to Berlin when the election was called for Donald Trump.

As you would expect, the Presidential Election was a dominate side topic in the business meetings in Europe.  At one meeting with an executive for a major financial services organization in Southern Germany, our contingent was asked to share our perspective on the previous day's election.  I chimed in first.

It was not a time to give a partisan perspective.  What would someone in Germany care for that?

It wasn't time for a negative perspective either.  What would that serve?

So, I gave my pragmatic one.

I said that I believe time will show that a Trump presidency will be good for manufacturing and better for the Midwestern U.S. in general.  I shared that one consistent thing that every first-term president has ever wanted is to get re-elected.  Thus, the region that helped vote him in is important to him in the future--the Midwest matters to a Trump presidency.

The exec's response? "So yours is a not so pessimistic perspective."

Mission accomplished.

And I believe it.