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What Scares Me The Most About Donald Trump Making 'Deals' With Automakers

Globalization, both in concept and in practice, has its upsides as well as its downsides. It has been touted by Trump to be the source of many of the country’s economic ills. A company selling things in Mexico or another country where the cost of labor is cheaper is likely do so because they sell a less expensive product with slimmer margins.

However, the reality is that these cheaper goods—whether it be cars or laundry detergent at Wal-Mart—sometimes come at the cost of American jobs that have been priced out of relevance in their respective industries because of global competition. We simply can’t have both high-paying jobs for unskilled and entry-level skilled labor, and cheap cost of goods as the product of that labor. (Also, Trump and others forget the role automation, robots and other technologies have had in changing the face of manufacturing.)

Nevertheless, placing tariffs on said companies that choose to outsource their labor necessarily does more harm than good.

The only possible outcome of arbitrary tariffs would be to increase the cost of goods and decrease competition in the market. With these Mexican-built, small cars essentially becoming more expensive and less common in the marketplace, it hits those who rely on them the most, and those are almost always people who can’t afford much else.

(Jalopnik.com)