Bringing Back Manufacturing Jobs to the U.S.A.: Confronting Tough Realities

Meeting with American corporate CEOs at the White House on the first “working day” of his presidency, Donald Trump warned, “A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States and build some factory somewhere else, then thinks that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States . . . that’s just not going to happen.”[1] The new president was up against “tectonic forces” in trying to bring back “blue collar” manufacturing jobs to his base using tax policy. Yet the business calculus goes immediately on the basis of financial advantage, and the contours of the “game board” include the various tax and trade policies of countries.

The full essay is at "Bringing Back the Jobs."

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[1] Nelson D. Schwartz and Alan Rappeport, “Call to Create Jobs, or Else, Tests Trump’s Sway,” The New York Times, January 24, 2017.

GDP and Poverty: Is Economic Growth the Answer?

From 1959 to 1973, the American economy grew 82 percent, per person. It is easy to assume this is why the poverty rate decreased from 22% to 11 percent.[1] From roughly 1985 to 1990 and then again from 1995 to 2000, heady growth rates are also correlated positively with declining poverty rates. But correlation is not causation. Indeed, had the correlation in the 1959-1973 period continued, the subsequent per capita growth would have ended poverty in 1986. What then are we to make of the relationship between GDP and poverty?

From: “GDP and Poverty: Is Economic Growth the Answer?”

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[1] Neil Irwin, “Growth Has Been Good for Decades. So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?” The New York Times, June 4, 2014.