I don't think it ever had a rationale, except to Scott Walker who had run on a promise of creating thousands of jobs then delivered zip (in fact negative after you consider how he killed High Speed Rail to spite Obama). Foxconn has a history of simply demanding the best deal they can get and making promises they don't keep. This was another promise and fade just like Amazon's HQ2.
Dr K should, though, prepare himself for a lawsuit, as some eagle-eyed tRump junior staff member will spot the "attack" on tRump's numeracy as "slander", and recommend filing a lawsuit...I mean, if the Des Moines Register can get sued for running a poll that tRump disagreed with, well, anything goes, right?
Personally, I expect crony capitalism to create the mother of all bubbles…that will then pop. A couple of years of “alternate arithmetic” before reality asserts its Marxist bias.
I agree. The problem is that by the time the bubble pops, Trump may have distorted the legal and political system to the point that it is irreversible, like Orban, his hero in Hungary.
Joe Biden's approach is much more sensible and effective. Identify key industries of the future such as electric vehicle manufacturing and leading edge semiconductor manufacturing. Provide public funds and support to encourage private investment. Support Unions and workers. Use tariffs stategically to protect investments in American workers. Look at the effort that will be required to create a "silicon heartland" in Ohio. Educating workers and engineers. Roads, construction workers, energy supply. Local suppliers. Intel fab. It takes a lot more than just getting a billionaire to make another empty promise in order to Trump a day of good press.
It didn't garner headlines because Democrats did not win the style war. What grabs headlines and coverage today is very like old supermarket tabloid headlines - reality tv soap opera headlines. All through the many good things Biden did, he/his team felt it was enough to simply put out a calm press release of the fact - and left it there. They didn't play to the dumbing down/democratization of mass media. Perhaps they were above it. Perhaps they were too dignified. Perhaps it felt dishonest or tacky to hype what they'd accomplished. But it caused the loss of the election. Now, in this climate, All the way through an administration, you have to constantly present your accomplishments as hyper realistic bombshells - in mass media and social media, written, audio, video. You have to disparage those who didn't support your bill or plan. You have to shout out and show that they've killed children by not supporting it. You have to keep doing it - so it seeps into peoples' brains busy with other things - so when it finally comes time to vote, they say - 'oh yeah I owe my health, my house, my family, my life, my dog, to that - what he did! He/She saved me!' Trump does this. He immediately takes over Biden's accomplishments and trumpets how well trump did with them, that trump saved you from disaster - and that it was all trump's doing. Democrats cry - he has no shame! Well yeah, given fact - but we let him do it. We do not counter with stronger more creative, funnier, head grabbers. Under Biden and today's Democrats, the quiet history of fact is forgotten. Instead we all look at a train wreak or people hanging onto airplane tires, or a dying kitten. The opposition uses that, plants blame where they want it, and reminds us of it constantly. This is PR pure and simple. trump and his staff do it very well. It suits the times. It's what people remember. It makes a lot bigger, longer splash than Biden's soft polite factual approach. That election was lost by PR. It didn't have to be that way. You've got to create stories that people remember, with humor and suspense - and you have to repeat them until they resonate. It doesn't mean you have to lie. It does mean you have to write cliffhanger stories well, and get audio and video out that grab attention with surprise and humor, that constantly elicits gratitude/affection for your candidate/office holder. It absolutely drove me crazy that Biden and team didn't do it. Communication. Do it well - you win support. Don't do it - you're gone.
But you also have to do it on about a 4th grade level. That's about the level trump operates on. The literacy level of 54% of our population is 6th grade or lower so trump talks to them in their language.
Read one of Carl Hiaasen's young adult books. Plot, energy, suspense, emotion, humor - accessible and enjoyed by all ages. No need to talk down. There are lots of smart people who are immersed in other occupations, as well as people who are plenty smart - just not academically educated. It's obvious that trump feels contempt for the people he manipulates. You can see it on his face. He is amused at them - at how slavish they are. Not a good idea. That can come back to bite him. Fact: There are all different kinds of people. Want to win elections? Learn to communicate well with them. Consider Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. He had to keep a nation full of individuals who were all suffering in different ways, attentive to what he told them - about the war, about rationing, about what it meant to keep fighting - why it was worth it. He didn't talk down. He talked to them. And they responded because he communicated in language they understood, about conditions they understood. He talked right to them - not from behind a desk, but from a chair in front of a Whitehouse fireplace, directly to people in their living rooms. Every week. Again and again. He knew he had to remind them weekly about what was happening and what was being done, if he was going to be able to keep everyone working together and sticking it out - "for the duration." Biden could have done that. Audio and video could have been made and sent everywhere, regularly. It would have been impossible for mogul mass media to wholly ignore. No candidate, and no elective office holder, should ever ignore communicating often with their constituents on a direct level again. And they definitely should not ignore what good PR can do.
All so true and maddening. The Biden Admin did do some photo ops--especially once some of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure money started getting approved and grants to companies got formally announced over the past year or so...But that wasn't done with much theater, and the media and the GOP negatively spun a lot of the funding & projects (look at all the 'worrying' over federal dollars going to Intel). It took a good 2 -3 years for the first fake Foxconn investment to get negative coverage back in Trump 1.0. With Biden, the criticism and doubters started within days of the IRA passage.
All good except the part about tariffs. Remember, they tax exports even the exports of the "industries of the future" that are supposedly being favored.
I agree with the tariff comment. However, I hope I'm applying lessons learned from Paul over the years correctly, don't let the ideal get in the way of the politically possible. I don't think tariffs are good but they are a political necessity at this point in time. Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown and Trump are going to tariff. At least use them strategically as part of a plan that will result in a world competitive manufacturing system.
Last time, it ended with one out of every 250 Americans dying of Covid, more than twice worse than Canada's rate. About 700,000 more died of Covid than if we had Canada's public health policies, making Trump 230 times more deadly to Americans than Osama Bin Laden.
🙏 during the months long peak covid waves, more people died each day than 911. Like a 911 everyday for 3-5 months. And the health care deaths. Almost 4,000 ER and hospital doctors and nurses died of COVID before the vaccine was available. 20% have left the profession since.
For the convicted former guy, his next administration’s first victims will be immigrants. Then the vulnerable lower wage jobs, and then the middle class as economic fallacies become policy. Everyone should brace for impact.
This is a really important analysis and illustrates perfectly the Trump M.O.
I have to confess to being momentarily taken in by Trump's announcement, although I assumed there had to be something fishy about it, but that's the way Trump operates--taking in stupid, or poorly informed people.
He's always the con man.
The news that really shocks me is that otherwise smart people, like Salesforce's Mark Benioff, either appear to be taken in (or are pretending to be) Trump's invitations for high tech people to kiss his ass in Mar-a-Lago. It all looks like a Mafia protection scheme--give me credibility or I'll threaten to have my justice department go after you. Worse, it also looks like the caving of the Prussian business class in the 1930s to Hitler in Germany.
Well, if borrowing costs go up, and Americans end up paying (even) more on their credit card debt - there may be a spike of employment in the debt collection industry. So it's all good.
Memories of the planned Foxconn plant in Wisconsin are dancing through my head right now. The old adage, it if sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't also applicable.
I'm not especially glad you left the Times, but I'm glad you are here, and I wouldn't have found you if Matt Yglesias hadn't mentioned it! Please keep writing sir; we need you.
So what you're saying is Trump 2.0 has brought us Foxconn 2.0. I fear that just as many have forgotten Foxconn 1.0, most will also not take notice of the Mr. Son's con either.
So, he he plans to invest $100 billion in the United States, supposedly creating 100,000 jobs. Couldn't he just give those 100,000 people a million dollars each? Hi approach seems awfully inefficient. But, as you pointed out, it was also just of show.
Doesn't the connection between jobs created and investment depend on the type of investment? For example, if he's buying existing companies or businesses, he isn't creating any jobs and, in fact, may ultimately reduce the number of employees in the acquired business.
One of the harder things to grasp in the equation of trade balance + net inflows of capital = 0 is that every dollar spent on imports by the US counts as a money flow into the US, because it becomes a debt. As an accounting equation it's correct, but GDP accounting often doesn't mean what people think.
Thanks for coming to Substack and leaving the Times!
Let’s not also forget about the Foxconn factory in WI that was never built
Beat me to it!
"President Donald Trump, Gov. Scott Walker and House Speaker Paul Ryan attend ceremonial groundbreaking in 2018"
https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/11/10/what-happened-to-foxconn-in-wisconsin-a-timeline/71535498007/
Without Ryan as Speaker, the political rationale disappeared.
I don't think it ever had a rationale, except to Scott Walker who had run on a promise of creating thousands of jobs then delivered zip (in fact negative after you consider how he killed High Speed Rail to spite Obama). Foxconn has a history of simply demanding the best deal they can get and making promises they don't keep. This was another promise and fade just like Amazon's HQ2.
Glad to see there will be no obeying in advance for Mr. PK. So glad you left the Times.
Dr K should, though, prepare himself for a lawsuit, as some eagle-eyed tRump junior staff member will spot the "attack" on tRump's numeracy as "slander", and recommend filing a lawsuit...I mean, if the Des Moines Register can get sued for running a poll that tRump disagreed with, well, anything goes, right?
This is America. Anyone can sue anyone else for anything. This is Trump's M.O. He has done it all his life.
Yep …
Personally, I expect crony capitalism to create the mother of all bubbles…that will then pop. A couple of years of “alternate arithmetic” before reality asserts its Marxist bias.
Sounds like another round of Republicans leaving an economic mess for Democrats to clean up ....
I agree. The problem is that by the time the bubble pops, Trump may have distorted the legal and political system to the point that it is irreversible, like Orban, his hero in Hungary.
Already happening, cf., Bitcoin bubble. Run away (before everyone else does)!
Joe Biden's approach is much more sensible and effective. Identify key industries of the future such as electric vehicle manufacturing and leading edge semiconductor manufacturing. Provide public funds and support to encourage private investment. Support Unions and workers. Use tariffs stategically to protect investments in American workers. Look at the effort that will be required to create a "silicon heartland" in Ohio. Educating workers and engineers. Roads, construction workers, energy supply. Local suppliers. Intel fab. It takes a lot more than just getting a billionaire to make another empty promise in order to Trump a day of good press.
And 16 Nobel Laureates in Economics agree with you.
But it doesn't garner headlines.
It didn't garner headlines because Democrats did not win the style war. What grabs headlines and coverage today is very like old supermarket tabloid headlines - reality tv soap opera headlines. All through the many good things Biden did, he/his team felt it was enough to simply put out a calm press release of the fact - and left it there. They didn't play to the dumbing down/democratization of mass media. Perhaps they were above it. Perhaps they were too dignified. Perhaps it felt dishonest or tacky to hype what they'd accomplished. But it caused the loss of the election. Now, in this climate, All the way through an administration, you have to constantly present your accomplishments as hyper realistic bombshells - in mass media and social media, written, audio, video. You have to disparage those who didn't support your bill or plan. You have to shout out and show that they've killed children by not supporting it. You have to keep doing it - so it seeps into peoples' brains busy with other things - so when it finally comes time to vote, they say - 'oh yeah I owe my health, my house, my family, my life, my dog, to that - what he did! He/She saved me!' Trump does this. He immediately takes over Biden's accomplishments and trumpets how well trump did with them, that trump saved you from disaster - and that it was all trump's doing. Democrats cry - he has no shame! Well yeah, given fact - but we let him do it. We do not counter with stronger more creative, funnier, head grabbers. Under Biden and today's Democrats, the quiet history of fact is forgotten. Instead we all look at a train wreak or people hanging onto airplane tires, or a dying kitten. The opposition uses that, plants blame where they want it, and reminds us of it constantly. This is PR pure and simple. trump and his staff do it very well. It suits the times. It's what people remember. It makes a lot bigger, longer splash than Biden's soft polite factual approach. That election was lost by PR. It didn't have to be that way. You've got to create stories that people remember, with humor and suspense - and you have to repeat them until they resonate. It doesn't mean you have to lie. It does mean you have to write cliffhanger stories well, and get audio and video out that grab attention with surprise and humor, that constantly elicits gratitude/affection for your candidate/office holder. It absolutely drove me crazy that Biden and team didn't do it. Communication. Do it well - you win support. Don't do it - you're gone.
But you also have to do it on about a 4th grade level. That's about the level trump operates on. The literacy level of 54% of our population is 6th grade or lower so trump talks to them in their language.
Read one of Carl Hiaasen's young adult books. Plot, energy, suspense, emotion, humor - accessible and enjoyed by all ages. No need to talk down. There are lots of smart people who are immersed in other occupations, as well as people who are plenty smart - just not academically educated. It's obvious that trump feels contempt for the people he manipulates. You can see it on his face. He is amused at them - at how slavish they are. Not a good idea. That can come back to bite him. Fact: There are all different kinds of people. Want to win elections? Learn to communicate well with them. Consider Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. He had to keep a nation full of individuals who were all suffering in different ways, attentive to what he told them - about the war, about rationing, about what it meant to keep fighting - why it was worth it. He didn't talk down. He talked to them. And they responded because he communicated in language they understood, about conditions they understood. He talked right to them - not from behind a desk, but from a chair in front of a Whitehouse fireplace, directly to people in their living rooms. Every week. Again and again. He knew he had to remind them weekly about what was happening and what was being done, if he was going to be able to keep everyone working together and sticking it out - "for the duration." Biden could have done that. Audio and video could have been made and sent everywhere, regularly. It would have been impossible for mogul mass media to wholly ignore. No candidate, and no elective office holder, should ever ignore communicating often with their constituents on a direct level again. And they definitely should not ignore what good PR can do.
All so true and maddening. The Biden Admin did do some photo ops--especially once some of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure money started getting approved and grants to companies got formally announced over the past year or so...But that wasn't done with much theater, and the media and the GOP negatively spun a lot of the funding & projects (look at all the 'worrying' over federal dollars going to Intel). It took a good 2 -3 years for the first fake Foxconn investment to get negative coverage back in Trump 1.0. With Biden, the criticism and doubters started within days of the IRA passage.
Thank you for the excellent analysis and comment.
Thank you. That was very interesting.
All good except the part about tariffs. Remember, they tax exports even the exports of the "industries of the future" that are supposedly being favored.
I agree with the tariff comment. However, I hope I'm applying lessons learned from Paul over the years correctly, don't let the ideal get in the way of the politically possible. I don't think tariffs are good but they are a political necessity at this point in time. Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown and Trump are going to tariff. At least use them strategically as part of a plan that will result in a world competitive manufacturing system.
In Ohio? Hahahaahahahahahaha. I couldn’t even begin to exercise the differences between Silicon Valley and the rust belt
Well said. Thank you.
None of us is ready for what's about to come.
Last time, it ended with one out of every 250 Americans dying of Covid, more than twice worse than Canada's rate. About 700,000 more died of Covid than if we had Canada's public health policies, making Trump 230 times more deadly to Americans than Osama Bin Laden.
🙏 during the months long peak covid waves, more people died each day than 911. Like a 911 everyday for 3-5 months. And the health care deaths. Almost 4,000 ER and hospital doctors and nurses died of COVID before the vaccine was available. 20% have left the profession since.
For the convicted former guy, his next administration’s first victims will be immigrants. Then the vulnerable lower wage jobs, and then the middle class as economic fallacies become policy. Everyone should brace for impact.
And OBL was blowback for Bush I’s war in Iraq.
This is a really important analysis and illustrates perfectly the Trump M.O.
I have to confess to being momentarily taken in by Trump's announcement, although I assumed there had to be something fishy about it, but that's the way Trump operates--taking in stupid, or poorly informed people.
He's always the con man.
The news that really shocks me is that otherwise smart people, like Salesforce's Mark Benioff, either appear to be taken in (or are pretending to be) Trump's invitations for high tech people to kiss his ass in Mar-a-Lago. It all looks like a Mafia protection scheme--give me credibility or I'll threaten to have my justice department go after you. Worse, it also looks like the caving of the Prussian business class in the 1930s to Hitler in Germany.
Exactly
Thank you sir. It’s a convenient way for Trump to make news and for Masoyoshi to gain publicity for himself and his company. Nothing more.
Trump's tariffs will make Americans pay more, force up inflation
and cause interest rates to be higher, but won't create many jobs. We've seen it all before.
Well, if borrowing costs go up, and Americans end up paying (even) more on their credit card debt - there may be a spike of employment in the debt collection industry. So it's all good.
Memories of the planned Foxconn plant in Wisconsin are dancing through my head right now. The old adage, it if sounds to good to be true, it probably isn't also applicable.
I'm not especially glad you left the Times, but I'm glad you are here, and I wouldn't have found you if Matt Yglesias hadn't mentioned it! Please keep writing sir; we need you.
So what you're saying is Trump 2.0 has brought us Foxconn 2.0. I fear that just as many have forgotten Foxconn 1.0, most will also not take notice of the Mr. Son's con either.
Everyone knows arithmetic has a Liberal bias. 🙄
So, he he plans to invest $100 billion in the United States, supposedly creating 100,000 jobs. Couldn't he just give those 100,000 people a million dollars each? Hi approach seems awfully inefficient. But, as you pointed out, it was also just of show.
Doesn't the connection between jobs created and investment depend on the type of investment? For example, if he's buying existing companies or businesses, he isn't creating any jobs and, in fact, may ultimately reduce the number of employees in the acquired business.
One of the harder things to grasp in the equation of trade balance + net inflows of capital = 0 is that every dollar spent on imports by the US counts as a money flow into the US, because it becomes a debt. As an accounting equation it's correct, but GDP accounting often doesn't mean what people think.