Not that I'm for higher prices which is what higher cost labor brings, but Trump's saving of some jobs at Carrier followed by this new and sudden cancellation of a new $1.6bn Ford plant in Mexico is going to suggest to the work a day blue collar guy that he is doing something right. Additionally, when the GOP tried to gut the independent oversight function on congress, Trump pointed it out as not the highest priority and the stinky government hand retreated rapidly and loudly from the cookie jar, thus seeming to remind his own party that draining the swamp cuts both ways.
Despite all the whining by the liberal left, the winners of the recent US presidential election will turn out to be the people. Not because Trump is such a great and honest man. More likely he senses how close we are to civil war and understands that government must be reigned in, at least making good theater of it for a while, in order to sell his legitimacy. He is going to have to work hard to do that and so I think he will make visible progress along those lines. Even the loud liberals like "I want to punch him in the face" De niro will be forced to admit that he did a better job than expected IMO.
The move of many manufacturing plants from the US and Canada to Mexico was not so much because of labor costs as of labor unions. The new plants in Mexico needed fewer workers than in the US by relying more on automation. This was particularly true of automakers, whose contracts with unions limited automation in plants stateside. I have no doubt that this new plant is going to be even more automated and that Ford will leverage the situation to run over the corrupt unions. Even Adidas is returning the manufacture of tennis shoes to Europe because there now are robots which can craft one with no human help whatsoever.
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