Trump's Economy

[JRT]

Fed warns U.S. economic recovery is weakening

I don't see how the economy can truly begin to recover well while the pandemic is still in full swing, while the population lacks effective long term herd immunity. I don't expect that to happen for a long while yet.

[DOR]

I don't see how the economy can truly begin to recover well while the pandemic is still in full swing, while the population lacks effective long term herd immunity. I don't expect that to happen for a long while yet.

Herd immunity is basically making the weak, the immunity-compromised, and those unable to afford good healthcare suffer so that the strong, healthy, and wealthy don't have to.

[JRT]

Herd immunity is basically making the weak, the immunity-compromised, and those unable to afford good healthcare suffer so that the strong, healthy, and wealthy don't have to.

You misinterpreted my comment.

Your comment seems to be ignoring that herd immunity can be achieved by vaccinating a sufficiently large fraction of the population with vaccines that are adequately effective, such that the entire population is well protected, including those in the smaller fraction who cannot be safely vaccinated and those suffering compromised immune systems. With herd immunity, the disease does not easily find vulnerable hosts within the herd, and tends to fade before finding those few within the herd who remain vulnerable. It is the herd immunity that protects the weak and vulnerable who cannot be otherwise protected.

Edit:
Separate from that, if there is a continued failure to vaccinate a large swath of the world's population outside of the first world, then the virus will have opportunity to replicate many more times than it would otherwise, and each is an ooportunity for a mutation, and some of those mutations can allow the virus to be more transmissible, to be more virulent, to be more resistant to anti-body treatments, to be less susceptible to immune system response promoted by the vaccinations. If different enough, new variants could emerge that obviate the herd immunity developed against eatlier variants, and a new vaccine would need to be developed, and the world would need new vaccination. So it is in the best self-interest of the first world to vaccinate the third world as soon as-is practicable.

And aside from all of that, bats and monkeys are large repositories of many more viruses, some of which may be capable of zoonotic transmission of infection from animal to human, and some people are still hunting and eating bushmeat including those bats and monkeys while not practicing good hygene. Another very different virus could be already traveling similar vectors toward another global pandemic in the human population. ...because we have not addressed the source, the bushmeat.

[DOR]

US Trade 2020

America's two-way trade fell 9% in 2020 but rose by nearly 0.5% in the fourth quarter, as compared to a year earlier. That was the first quarterly rise since January-March 2019 after six straight periods of decline. The 2019-20 period tied with 1982-83 for the second longest trade contraction since 1960. The worst was seven quarters in 2015-16.

Although exports continued to fall for the twelfth month in a row, imports expanded 5% over December 2019, the third straight rise but off from November's 6.3% pace.

The largest bilateral trade balances were with China (-$310.8 bn), Europe (-$244.9 bn), and North America (-$127.7 bn). Among the 15 most important trading partners, exports to China (up 17.1%) were the only ones not to fall. Imports from China were down 3.6%, but up from neighboring Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.

[JRT]

Trump -
Keynesian Domestic Economic Stimulus
of a Seditionist and Insurrection Provocateur

(increased the federal, state and local governments' domestic spending by more than $0.5B)

Trump's attempts to overturn the election have cost taxpayers more than $519 million

by Sarah Al-Arshani
06 February 2021

Former President Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election by propagating baseless claims of mass voter fraud have cost taxpayers more than $519 million, an analysis by The Washington Post found.

The Post tallied the cost from reviews of local, state, and federal spending records, and interviews with government officials. The costs included legal fees, damage costs from the Capitol siege in January, military and security expenses, and more.

Not long after the election was declared a victory for President Joe Biden, Trump falsely claimed there was mass election fraud, saying, with no evidence, that the election was stolen.

Trump and his Republican allies spent the weeks leading up to Biden's inauguration filing dozens of lawsuits in swing states attempting to overturn the results, delay certification, or throw out votes. They failed to win any of them.

Altogether, states spent $2.2 million on legal challenges and security for election officials, the Post found.

Pennsylvania, for instance, paid outside lawyers as much as $480 per hour to work against Trump's election fraud lawsuits.

At a "Save America" rally shortly before Congress began certifying the electoral vote on January 6, Trump told a crowd of supporters to march to the Capitol and continued to allege mass voter fraud. He also falsely claimed that Congress and Vice President Mike Pence could "decertify" the election results and give him another term.

Not long after his speech, supporters breached the US Capitol and clashed with law enforcement. The riot resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump for "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the riot. The Senate will hold an impeachment trial next week.

The riot led to a demand for increased security around lawmakers and the Capitol ahead of the impeachment trial.

National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, DC, following the attack and some will remain there until mid-March. The Post reported that the cost for that is at least $480 million. Additionally, the week of the attack, the DC Metropolitan Police spent $8.8 million protecting the Capitol.

Costs for repairing the Capitol to clean up the damage of the attack, the cost for the US Park Police to clean up the National Mall, and costs for additional staffing, overtime, and medical bills from Capitol Police are also still unknown.

Members of Congress are also now using their publicly funded Members' Representational Allowances, which comes from taxpayer money, to secure personal protective resources, from bulletproof vests to private security details and surveillance cameras, the Post reported.

Acting Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman last month proposed permanently keeping the fence that was installed around the Capitol building following the January 6 riot.

The move garnered pushback from local officials, but if it were to be implemented, beyond being approved by the Capitol Police Board, the House and Senate would also have to approve appropriating funds to fortify the building.

States so far also spent $28 million for security relating to the insurrection and inauguration, the Post reported.

The costs included protecting their own statehouses following the Capitol attack. For instance, state officials in California spent around $19 million deploying National Guard and state troopers to the state Capitol and other locations between Jan. 14 to Jan. 21, the Post reported.

In Texas and North Carolina, taxpayers paid for helicopters to monitor potential protests, and in cities like Lansing, Michigan, and Olympia, Washington, they paid for temporary fencing and extra security details for state lawmakers going to legislative sessions.

.

[TopHatter]

Foxconn mostly abandons $10 billion Wisconsin project touted by Trump

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.

The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing.

For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump’s trade policies threatened the company’s cash cow: building Apple Inc’s iPhones in China for export to America.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic devices, proposed a 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in Wisconsin that would have been the largest investment in U.S. history for a new location by a foreign-based company.

It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.

But industry executives, including some at Foxconn, were highly skeptical of the plan from the start, pointing out that none of the crucial suppliers needed for flat-panel display production were located anywhere near Wisconsin.

The plan faced local opposition too, with critics denouncing a taxpayer giveaway to a foreign company and provisions of the deal that granted extensive water rights and allowed for the acquisition and demolition of houses through eminent domain.

As of 2019, the village where the plant is located had paid just over $152 million for 132 properties to make way for Foxconn, plus $7.9 million in relocation costs, according to village records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio and analyzed by Wisconsin Watch.

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said the new agreement gives it “flexibility to pursue business opportunities in response to changing global market conditions.” The company said “original projections used during negotiations in 2017 have at this time changed due to unanticipated market fluctuations.”

After abandoning its plans for advanced displays, Foxconn later said it would build smaller, earlier-generation displays in Wisconsin, but that plan never came to fruition either.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters in Taipei that the company currently makes servers, communications technology products and medical devices in Wisconsin, adding that electric vehicles (EVs) have a “promising future” there. He did not elaborate.

Liu had previously said the infrastructure was there in Wisconsin to make EVs because of its proximity to the traditional heartland of U.S. automaking, but the company could also could decide on Mexico.

Hon Hai shares fell as much as 1.6% on Wednesday morning, underperforming the broader Taiwan market which was down 0.7%.

INCENTIVES

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said the new agreement will save Wisconsin taxpayers “a total of $2.77 billion compared to the previous contract, maintain accountability measures requiring job creation to receive incentives, and protect hundreds of millions of dollars in local and state infrastructure investments made in support of the project.”

Evers said under the deal negotiated between the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and Foxconn, the Taiwan company is eligible to receive up to $80 million in performance-based tax credits over six years if it meets employment and capital investment targets. He stressed that the incentives were in line with those available to any company.

The state will reduce the tax credits authorized for the project to $80 million from $2.85 billion.

The original Wisconsin package also included local tax incentives and road and highway investments by state and local governments, which brought total taxpayer-funded subsidies to more than $4 billion.

Foxconn noted that since 2017, it has invested $900 million in Wisconsin, including several different facilities in the state.

The state has already spent more than $200 million on road improvements, tax exemptions and grants to local governments for worker training and employment, according to the records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio.
__________

The Great Deal Maker certainly knows how to bring home the bacon. Fucking moron.

[TopHatter]

U.S. aluminum tariffs have led to investment, jobs -think tank study

U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports imposed by former president Donald Trump and continued by President Joe Biden have led to increased output, employment and capital investment by domestic producers, a new study from a left-leaning think tank showed on Tuesday.

The Economic Policy Institute said the 10% aluminum tariffs, imposed in March 2018 under the "Section 232" national security section of a Cold War-era trade law, have led to $6 billion in 57 downstream aluminum product manufacturing projects that will employ over 4,500 additional workers.

They will add more than 1.1 million metric tons in annual rolling and extrusion capacity, said the report, which was released as U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai begins talks with the European Union to resolve disputes over the U.S. tariffs on EU steel and aluminum. read more

U.S. steel industry groups, citing a similar EPI study backing the Section 232 steel tariffs, urged Biden last week to keep those tariffs in place. read more

The report argues that there is no evidence of a "meaningful adverse effect" from the tariffs on industries or consumers. It said that the causal relationship between primary aluminum prices and those of end-use goods made from aluminum, including canned beer, construction products, furniture and motor vehicle bodies, shows the effects to be "statistically zero to economically trivial."

It also said that retaliatory 25% EU tariffs on American whiskey have not hurt the industry, citing an annualized volume growth rate of 6.8% from 2017 to 2020, exceeding its growth rate the previous three years.

"U.S. whiskey producers found more profitable uses in domestic markets for the whiskey they were already producing," the study said.

As the report was being prepared, EPI's past president, trade economist Thea Lee, earlier this month started as a Biden administration appointee to the Labor Department, where she will head the agency's International Affairs Bureau, an office that helps enforce labor rights provisions in U.S. trade agreements. read more .
__________

As loathe as I am to give Trump credit for anything, I'm also morally honest enough to at least bring up possible successes for consideration, especially if it's being reported by the "opposition".

DOR can you weigh in on this? Why do you suppose aluminium tariffs have been a success and retaliatory measures against the U.S. have apparently failed?

[DOR]

It's always dangerous to take the ideologically tinged opinion at face value, or as the only one. When the protectionists point to success in denying American citizens and companies the benefits of world prices, I tend to look at what is happening to those prices.

You'd be surprised: global price of aluminum shoots up through the roof, while industrial electric power – the single larges cost to aluminum producers – doesn't quite keep pace.

I wonder what happens to profits when prices rise nearly 60%, and costs less than 2%… ?

World aluminum prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PALUMUSDM#0
US industrial electricity prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPS0543#0

[TopHatter]

It's always dangerous to take the ideologically tinged opinion at face value, or as the only one. When the protectionists point to success in denying American citizens and companies the benefits of world prices, I tend to look at what is happening to those prices.

Interesting, I never thought to look at it that way.

The ideological tinge in this case though is, at worst, non-partisan. Otherwise I would've discarded it as irrelevant. The fact that the EPI does seem left-leaning is what really piqued my curiosity.

I wonder why the huge demand for aluminium though...

[statquo]

I wonder why the huge demand for aluminium though...

Manufacturing is fueling the demand, especially in the automobile and aerospace industries because it’s a lightweight material. At least that’s what I’ve understood.

[TopHatter]

Manufacturing is fueling the demand, especially in the automobile and aerospace industries because it’s a lightweight material. At least that’s what I’ve understood.

Yeah probably after the huge slowdown last year due to COVID

[Albany Rifles]

Yeah probably after the huge slowdown last year due to COVID

Yeah we are starting to see a big upswing in demand.

On a related note, I wonder if the shortage of computers for vehicles will slow down demand and uncover more on this topic.

What I would also be interested in is how much the upswing in solar farms is having on this. In my county several older farms which had grown fallow over the years are being converted into solar farms...I am talking well into 20,000+ acres in Virginia within the past 4 years. That is a lot of aluminum.

I don't have the skills or knowledge on this to really know where to look.

But the Green New Deal is working in my county!

[astralis]

the US badly, badly needs to make the long-term investments now into building chip manufacturing in this country.

we are-- actually, the entire globe is -- completely desperate for TSMC chips from Taiwan, which is undergoing both a bad drought plus a COVID wave. as much as I love the country of my birth, as an American this is a very very bad place to be.

and if the PRC ever comes across the fence...

this is a good demonstration of the "cons" of free trade.

[Albany Rifles]

the US badly, badly needs to make the long-term investments now into building chip manufacturing in this country.

we are-- actually, the entire globe is -- completely desperate for TSMC chips from Taiwan, which is undergoing both a bad drought plus a COVID wave. as much as I love the country of my birth, as an American this is a very very bad place to be.

and if the PRC ever comes across the fence...

this is a good demonstration of the "cons" of free trade.

Eric,

So is this a cottage industry thing?

I know the Great Recession sure shot what remained of the US semiconductor industry right in the ass...we lost 2 plants here around Richmond from Motorola (?) alone.

So is this US industry just never got back in the game? Was the industry already in retreat before the Recession?

So I guess I am asking what will it take to get ahead?

Thanks

Buck

[astralis]

Buck,

Eric,

So is this a cottage industry thing?

yeah, all part of the globalization/just-in-time specialization push. makes for great economic efficiency by concentrating risk.

unfortunately given where the PRC is now under Xi, and COVID, we're now seeing the downsides as we eat the concentrated risk.

I know the Great Recession sure shot what remained of the US semiconductor industry right in the ass...we lost 2 plants here around Richmond from Motorola (?) alone.

So is this US industry just never got back in the game? Was the industry already in retreat before the Recession?

So I guess I am asking what will it take to get ahead?

Thanks

Buck

foundries generally cost $10 billion a pop and roughly a decade to stand up -- and that's the easy part. the hard part is finding the technical experts for chip design. China has been throwing billions at the problem but found out that the human side of the house was the real LIMFAC.

so, they have been poaching Taiwanese experts for a number of years now, to the point where Taiwan has passed laws against PRC recruitment and have conducted a number of raids against PRC recruiting fronts and companies.

on the US front, Intel announced back in March that they were gonna spend $20 billion for several new chip foundries in Arizona. which sounds impressive until you realize 1.) that Intel spent $85 billion over the last decade in stock buybacks, 2.) we're gonna be badly dependent on a huge single-point failure source for the next 5-10 years minimum.

GOP market fundamentalism has f*cked the nation far more than all this talk about Democratic "socialism".