The facts about jobs moving elsewhere under Trump

Everything about this guy, and his administration, and contemporary right-wing conservatism, is such BS that so much just gets lost in the muck.

While the Trump administration has claimed that the era of U.S. offshoring is “over,” the reality is that the United States has not begun to address the root causes of America’s growing trade deficits and the decline of American manufacturing. Decades of trade, currency, and tax policies that incentivized offshoring, combined with an utter failure to invest adequately in infrastructure and good jobs at home, have contributed to growing inequality and an eroding middle class.

President Trump’s erratic, ego-driven, and inconsistent trade policies have not achieved any measurable progress, despite the newly combative rhetoric. On top of that, COVID-19—and the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis—has wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in U.S. manufacturing.

Unless steps are taken now—to reform our trade policy, to curb dollar overvaluation, to eliminate tax incentives for offshoring, and to rebuild the domestic economy—there won’t be a comeback. - Economic Policy Institute

Party of Trump keeps its recession streak going

I hadn’t known, myself, off the top of my head, that the correct answer is “40 years.”

The slow and inadequate reaction to the COVID-19 crisis, and Donald Trump's continued total lack in intent in responding to it further, makes it likely it's only going to get worse. So, once again, a Democrat is going to have to clean up this mess starting in January 2021. Because fact: for the last 40 years, every recession has begun with a Republican president and ended under a Democrat's watch. - Daily Kos

A pending spike in small farm bankruptcies

I'm not saying this is absolutely bound to happen. Neither, actually, are the authors of this. But their rational deduction from the evidence seems to me to have a great deal of validity.

But Barber has only to look a few weeks down the road to see bad news coming. The current model won’t survive the peak summer harvest, says Barber, who for 16 years has run the farm and restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, about 30 miles northeast of New York City, in addition to the 20-year-old Blue Hill, in Manhattan. Unfortunately, he has numbers to back him up. ResourcED, a project he and his colleagues created to sell market boxes at both restaurants, has launched a survey of small farmers, concentrated at first in the Northeast but expanding coast to coast. Between 30 and 40 percent of them predict that they won’t be able to keep up with increasing volume. They will lose the extra, essential revenue that always comes with a bountiful seasonal harvest. And while most of the farmers grow produce, the same dark predictions hold true for respondents who grow grain and raise animals. The current boom is a sweet illusion; the bust is coming fast.

Where do they expect this to end? Bankruptcy, from which many will not recover. - The Counter

Holding corporations to account for any bailout money

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) put a list of suggestions on Twitter. Stuff like maintaining payrolls and prohibiting stock buybacks. Obviously these ideas didn’t actually originate with her, or with any one person in particular, but this is a convenient presentation.

I would add, make companies bring back the money they have stashed in tax-evading overseas accounts, and pay their taxes on it, and then go through that, before they get a dime of bailout. Another thing I’d do, is use the criminal code to liquidate the scorched-earth vulture capital firms, and put those ill-gotten assets back into the economy.

The chances of much of this happening, especially my added notions, are not great to say the least. But of course it’s worth aiming for, in whatever ways.