Following Up: Back on Twitter – & its Troubling Explanation

Tags

censorship, Following Up, free speech, freedom of speech, hashtags, social media, Twitter

As I posted yesterday, I was suspended on Twitter late in the morning even though I couldn’t imagine having violated any of the platform’s rules – or at least the best known ones, which seek to bar bullying and hate speech and other such noxious practices. (Not that I’m saying I agree with this Twitter policy, largely because of related free speech and definitional concerns, but that’s a separate issue.)

Late in the afternoon, I was pleased to learn that I had been reinstated. I was also pleased that Twitter responded in detail to my request for an explanation for its decision – though I must confess to being puzzled by its rationale, and by its belief (or by the parameters used by the algorithms that apparently make most of these calls) responsible for the suspension.

According to Twitter, I had been:

>”using a trending or popular hashtag with an intent to subvert or manipulate a conversation or to drive traffic or attention to accounts, websites, products, services, or initiatives”; and

>”tweeting with excessive, unrelated hashtags in a single Tweet or across multiple tweets.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the hashtag thing, it involves putting the symbol that looks like a tic-tac-toe puzzle in front of a term in order to capitalize on that term’s popularity in Twitter-verse in order to call attention to a Tweet. So for example, in Tweets I send out naming the President, I  use #Trump. In Tweets I send out about the monthly U.S. jobs reports, I use #jobs. And typically, since individual Tweets usually included several such terms, these Tweets would include multiple hashtags. (E.g., #jobs and #economy.)

Since one of my main purposes in Tweeting is reaching the largest possible audience with my material, I thought the practice completely natural. And P.S. – I’m far from the only Tweeter who uses it (although I have acquired something of a reputation for using them frequently).

As a result, I’m completely mystified by the claim that I’ve used hashtags “excessively.” And I’m totally baffled at also being accused of using “unrelated hashtags” – since all those I included would be bearing on the Tweet’s main subject.

Have I been using “trending or popular hashtags” to “subvert or manipulate a conversation”? What on earth does that mean? And as for “driving traffic to accounts”? Of course, as mentioned above, I’ve been hoping to attract attention to my own. But that’s the whole point of using hashtags – and of Twitter offering the feature in the first place!

Finally, the only “website, product, service, or initiative” I’ve ever used hashtags, excessively or not, to promote have been RealityChek, outside freelance articles and media appearances of mine, and work by others (including articles and posts and other material) that I believe merit attention. If that’s my crime, I’m guilty as charged. But what could possibly be wrong with any of the above objectives?

Of course I’m glad that all worked out for the best, and that Twitter evidently judged my transgressions mild enough to warrant quick reinstatement. But contrary to my speculation yesterday, it wasn’t an entirely innocent mistake, or accident on the platform’s part. And it should be clear that if Twitter’s stated rules and parameters caught me, they’re way to broad and vague, and need serious rethinking.

Following Up: CNBC Interview Video Now On-Line…& More!

Tags

China, Following Up, i24News, Phase One, Trade, trade deal, trade talks

I’m pleased to announce that the video is now on-line of my appearance today on CNBC‘s “Power Lunch” program focusing on the latest developments on the U.S.-China trade front.  Click here for a timely discussion of one of today’s biggest headline stories.

In addition, here’s the link to an interview I did last week for the Israeli-American TV network i24News last Friday night on the “Phase One” agreement reached that day by U.S. and Chinese negotiators.  I did this over the phone, but I hope you’ll find it equally interesting.

To access it, click on the link and then press the download button.  But be sure to do it soon, since the recording will only be available for a week more.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

 

Following Up: Latest National Radio Interview on the China Trade War Now On-Line!

Tags

China, Following Up, Gordon G. Chang, manufacturing, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my interview Wednesday night on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show.  So click here for a timely discussion among John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me on the latest escalation(s) of the U.S.-China trade conflict.  (I come in at about the 3 minute-30-second mark.) And of course feel free to listen if you’ve already heard it!

BTW, see if you can spot the sentence in which I inadvertently called the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit with China a surplus.  And the reason why Chinese leader XiJinping’s advisers aren’t likely to let him listen to the segment.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Following Up: Many (and Maybe Most) U.S. Manufacturers Aren’t Buying the Tariff Fear-Mongering

Tags

capex, Dallas Federal Reserve, exports, Following Up, growth, Jobs, manufacturing, NAM, National Association of Manufacturers, Sikich, tariffs, Trade, trade wars

What a week for polls seeking to shed some light on whether and how much President Trump’s tariffs-heavy trade policies have affected American domestic manufacturing! Monday’s post reported on findings from the Dallas Federal Reserve bank pointing to the answer, “Not nearly as much damage as widely supposed, and some benefits.”

Since then, the results of two more surveys have been published, and they, too, indicate that the situation is much more complicated than portrayed by the gloom and doom claims and predictions from globalization cheerleaders in politics, the media, and the U.S. Offshoring Lobby. And one of them shows that more domestic American manufacturers are expecting net gains, not net losses, from the trade wars – and even that many are coping with more and higher tariffs by boosting their production at home. 

Let’s start with the poll supporting the “tariffmageddon” narrative most strongly. It’s the National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) Quarterly Outlook Survey for the second quarter of 2019. The headline number for trade mavens: 56 percent of the 689 respondent companies called “Trade uncertainties” their “primary current business challenge.” This concern trailed only “Attracting and retaining a quality workforce” (68.6 percent). During the first quarter, trade uncertainties were the top concern of only 52.6 percent of respondents – so that number’s up, but not dramatically.

For good measure, along these lines, the expected growth rate for exports over the next year was just 0.4 percent – the lowest such figure provided in eleven quarters (going back to the third quarter of 2016).

In addition, respondents’ expectations of major performance indicators also weakened from the first quarter’s results, including their own company’s outlook, and the growth of sales, production, hiring, and capital spending.

But again, the difference between the first and second quarter responses wasn’t game-changing. Indeed, nearly 80 percent of the companies described their outlooks as positive (down from nearly 90 percent in March, sales growth predictions declined from 4.4 percent to 3.4 percent, ditto for production growth, full-time payroll growth dropped from 2.1 percent to 1.6 percent, and capital spending from 2.8 percent to 2.2 percent. The only indicator that slipped into negative territory was inventories (from 0.4 percent growth to 0.1 percent contraction).

So that’s the glass-half-empty evidence. And now for something if not completely different, pretty substantially so. It’s a survey of manufacturers from Sikich, a Chicago-based accounting and consulting firm, and its headline finding: More executives reported feeling optimistic about the impact of recent and ongoing trade developments (38 percent) than expected a negative impact (35 percent). And the most optimistic respondents came from larger companies (45 percent) and “companies with operations outside the U.S.” (51 percent).

Even better for the Trump administration and its trade policy supporters – Sikich’s findings about how companies are responding to these trade developments: “The action cited most often was manufacturing more products, or components, in the United States (45%).” At the same time, “a substantial portion of companies are looking to diversify procurement by sourcing purchased materials from new countries (36%) and sourcing raw materials from new countries (33%).” (Note: These answers aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.)

In terms of their overall assessment of the economy, only 27 percent of the Sikich respondents believe that a U.S. recession over the next year is “extremely or very likely.” Interestingly, in light of their above trade-related responses, 49 percent of executives from larger companies – nearly twice as great a percentage – were expecting such a downturn.

And especially encouraging for all Americans: Not only were 63 percent of respondents nonetheless preparing for the possibility of a recession. But 53 percent of the total said they were “increasing the efficiency of production/business processes to reduce costs.” Such productivity-boosting measures are much more constructive – and economically beneficial – actions than whining about an imminent end to access to government-subsidized, artificially cheap inputs from places like China.

Nor do the Dallas Fed and Sikich results look like outliers. Their results are very much in line with those of polls I reported on last September – from the big Swiss-owned investment bank UBS, and Yahoo Finance.

Following Up: Podcast Now On-Line of Last Night’s China Trade Talks Radio Interview

Tags

Following Up, Gordon G. Chang, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade talks, trade war, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my interview last night on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show.  Click here for a timely discussion of the fast-moving U.S.-China trade talks with John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me.  Special bonus:  The segment spotlights my post yesterday describing evidence in the new Sino-American trade figures of the United States disengaging economically from the PRC – which, as I’ve previously reported, has been ongoing.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Following Up: Back Indeed on National Radio Tonight Talking China!

Tags

China, Following Up, Gordon G. Chang, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump

I just got the word that I will indeed be appearing tonight on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show to update the U.S.-China trade war story with John and co-host Gordon G. Chang.  And the segment will focus in particular on my new piece for The National Interest on President Trump’s unmistakable but ragged progress toward the essential goal of disengaging the United States from China economically.

The interview is slated to begin at 10:15 PM EST, and you can listen live on-line at this link.  As usual, if you’re not able to tune in, I’ll be posting a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

Following Up: Sign the Deal – then Seize the Border Security Initiative

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border security, border wall, Congress, crime, criminal aliens, Defense Department, Democrats, detention, Following Up, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, national emergency, shutdown, Trump

From what’s known of it, I’m as angry about the border security deal reached last night by Congressional negotiators to avert a new partial federal government shutdown as much as any immigration realist and/or supporter of President Trump. Even so, I would urge the President to sign it. (If he can win a few small improvements over the next day or two, as he’s just suggested he’ll seek, fine – but nothing achievable is worth sinking the agreement.) Then I’d recommend that he move to keep his promise that “we’ll be building the wall anyway” by using statutory authority to use Defense Department and other federal assets and resources to engage in barrier construction and secure the border in various other ways. In addition, the Trump administration should redouble efforts to keep his opponents on the defensive politically by shining the spotlight even more brightly on border security gaps left wide open by deal provisions they’ve insisted on.

I know that in yesterday’s post I argued that the Congressional Democrats, who have increasingly made clear their desire to gut meaningful border security completely, would both own a new shutdown morally (in terms of responsibility for government workers and contractors temporarily denied paychecks) and possibly pay a heavy price politically. The trouble is, that contention assumed that the Democrats’ latest cynical gambit, a new, goalpost-moving demand to shrivel (further) the federal government’s ability to detain apprehended illegal aliens – including surging numbers of border crossers – until their status hearings are held, would prevent the negotiators from reaching any agreement.

Consequently, any number of such aliens, including convicted criminals, would be released into American society, with little reason to believe many of them would risk a deportation decision (which would not be first for many). The result, as I wrote yesterday, would be a big victory for the Democrats’ principal goal of maximizing the number of migrants who can set foot on American soil to begin with, who consequently could avail themselves of the full range of legal due process protections to which everyone within U.S. territory is entitled, who would be released before their status hearings, and who would be scot-free to live and work in the United States until the Open Borders crowd could implement yet another amnesty.

Instead, the negotiators came to a conclusion that they, at least – if not necessarily many in their respective parties – could accept. There’s no denying that its threadbare reported barrier appropriation figure ($1.375 billion) would leave the current border security situation just about as unacceptable as it is today. So would the reported new quota on detention beds, which represent a big part of Washington’s ability to ensure that individuals arrested for immigration-law and related transgressions show up for hearings.

Final judgment should be withheld until the official text of the deal is released – especially on the beds issue. But some of the worst possible outcomes – from an immigration realist perspective – appear to have been avoided. In particular, although previous votes by Democrats so far haven’t been enough to prevent closet Open Borders supporters like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from declaring walls to be “immoral,” the new agreement will make this childish position more difficult than ever to take. In addition, the current number of border detention beds is being cut, but not, it seems, by nearly as much as the Democrats recently sought, and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency apparently will retain flexibility in their location.

Further, as its spokespeople have insisted, there’s a strong argument that President has ample legal authority to build and strengthen more in the way of barriers than the deal approves – even without taking the highly controversial step of declaring a national emergency. For example, as noted by one of my Twitter followers (“TruthHunterMan”), in a variety of circumstances, federal law states that “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any other department or agency of the Federal Government or of any State, local, tribal, or foreign law enforcement agency.”

Moreover, this statute specifies that one of the purposes for which this assistance may be provided include “the transportation of supplies and equipment, for the purpose of facilitating counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime within or outside the United States” and, more specifically, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In addition, as stated by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, “We will take as much money as you can give us and then we will go find money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier.” So let the search intensify.

Finally, the Trump administration has done a fair job of publicizing the dangers to public safety posed by inadequate border security, but much more is possible. For instance, couldn’t the administration vividly illustrate how limits on detention are forcing the release of dangerous aliens by publishing on a regular basis the names of these individuals and the charges against them? And maybe some mass releases could be conducted regularly, too – with officials reading this information to broadcast news audiences as the migrants in question are set free? That would sure be Must-See TV. 

This strategy would have the added virtues of freeing federal workers – especially low-wage workers employed both directly and indirectly through contractors – of the threat of real economic hardship; of avoiding the forced labor situation that results from requiring essential workers to report to their jobs even if their departments aren’t funded; and of ensuring that the quality of vital services like air traffic control and Department of Homeland Security missions including Coast Guard patrols isn’t dangerously degraded.

Even passage of the latest full Trump proposal wouldn’t have strengthened border security much in the near future. So signing the Congressional compromise clearly wouldn’t produce a fatal setback. The main challenge now before the President is to flip as much of the script as he can, and capitalize on all the opportunities before him to secure as much of the border as America can ASAP.

Following Up: Why the Racism Etc Charges Against Immigration Realists Look Weaker than Ever

Tags

Following Up, Hillary Clinton, Immigration, racism, Trump, xenophobia

Obviously, a recent Grinnell College poll with info on American attitudes towards immigration isn’t the Bible on this subject. But, as reported in Tuesday’s post, it shed an unusual amount of light on charges that immigration realists are racists and xenophobes, and if you doubt my conclusion that it exposed those allegations as hokum (to put it politely) check out these other findings from the survey.

Tuesday’s post focused on differences between Americans who voted for President Trump in 2016 and those who backed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton (who favored more lenient policies) on defining “real American identity.” It showed that the Trump voters (whose ranks of course included many supporters of more restrictive immigration policies) mostly rejected arguably racist and xenophobic ideas about American identity (e.g., that only Christians could be “real Americans”) and strongly embraced more inclusive definitions (e.g., “real Americans” accept folks with differing racial and religious backgrounds).

Yet the Grinnell survey also asked these two groups for their views of which kinds of immigrants the nation should and shouldn’t admit more of – measured by countries and regions of origin. And the responses send a similar message loud and clear: Trump voters’ views on immigrants from non-white regions and countries are virtually the same as their views on immigrants from majority white regions and countries. Here are the breakdowns, showing whether Trump and Clinton voters favor increasing or decreasing immigration from various countries and regions, whether they’d prefer leaving current levels where they are, or whether they’re not sure (n/s):

Mexico                        Trump                            Clinton

increase                          11                                   36

decrease                         40                                     8

same                               46                                  54

n/s                                    4                                     5

 

China                          Trump                            Clinton

increase                           9                                    23

decrease                        28                                    14

same                             59                                     58

n/s                                  4                                       5

 

India                         Trump                              Clinton

increase                        9                                       28

decrease                      25                                        7

same                           60                                       62

n/s                                6                                         4

 

Canada                   Trump                                Clinton

increase                    19                                        31

decrease                   16                                          7

same                         62                                       58

n/s 4 4

 

Middle East          Trump                                 Clinton

increase                    6                                          28

decrease                 47                                          11

same                       41                                         58

n/s                            5                                           3

 

Europe                Trump                                  Clinton

increase                 13                                          23

decrease                18                                            5

same                      64                                          66

n/s                           4                                            7

 

Caribbean          Trump                                  Clinton

increase                12                                           31

decrease                22                                            4

same                     62                                           60

n/s                          5                                             5

 

Africa               Trump                                     Clinton

increase               10                                            35

decrease              24                                               3

same                    60                                            58

n/s                         5                                               3

These results unmistakably show that it doesn’t make much difference to Trump voters where immigrants come from. Whether they’re arrivals, for example, from Europe (only 13 percent of Trump-ers want their ranks boosted) or Africa (ten percent), Trump-ers generally oppose greater inflows. The big outliers are Canada (19 percent) and the Middle East (six percent). And the degree of outlying isn’t enormous. Moreover, the racism charge looks particularly flimsy considering that the gap between support for more Mexican, Chinese, Indian, African, and Caribbean immigrants on the one hand, and more European immigrants on the other, is within four percentage points.

Could these numbers still support the xenophobia charge? That is, do they show that Trump voters just hate immigrants (and allegedly foreigners) indiscriminately? According to the Grinnell findings, this claim doesn’t make any sense, either. For in every case except Mexico and the Middle East, majorities of Trump supporters say they’re fine with keeping current immigration levels the same. And for some context, the nation currently admits legal immigrants at the rate of about one million each year. (According to the Department of Homeland Security, this number represents “nationals who are granted lawful permanent residence (i.e., immigrants who receive a ‘green card’), admitted as temporary nonimmigrants, granted asylum or refugee status, or are naturalized.)

Of course, polls are far from perfect, and the Grinnell sounding could be an outlier (though I’ve never seen any other surveys going over the same ground). But between the “real Americans” definition and country-of-origin results it reports, it’s at least a challenge to the Open Borders crowd either to explain why these findings are meaningless or misleading, or to produce data consistent with their unflattering description of the Trump supporters – and immigration restrictionists on the whole.

Following Up: More on Those Great New U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Figures

Tags

Following Up, inflation-adjusted wages, Jobs, Labor Department, manufacturing, real wages, Trump, wages

Friday’s post focused on what the new U.S. jobs report that morning (containing December data) revealed about the Trump tariffs’ impact so far on domestic American manufacturing. (Overwhelmingly, they’ve done no harm.) But it’s also worth noting other industry-related highlights of this Labor Department release – and highlights they were.

First, the headline figure (32,000 net new manufacturing jobs created on-month in December) was the best such performance since last December’s 39,000. And the total revisions for October and November together added 3,000 jobs to the results for those two months. (The November and December figures are still preliminary. Further, starting next month, the Labor Department will start publishing revisions of the key data back to January 2014 – which will further change yesterday’s findings.)

Partly as a result of the last few months’ numbers, 2018 stands preliminarily as the best year for U.S. manufacturing job creation (284,000) since 1997 (304,000). The previous December-to-December manufacturing employment gain was 209,000.

Also, manufacturing jobs as a share of total non-farm jobs (the Labor Department’s definition of the total U.S. employment universe) rose to just under 8.55 percent – their highest level since July, 2016 (8.56 percent). At the start of the Trump administration (February, 2017 was its first full month in office), this figure stood at 8.49 percent. In other words, manufacturing payroll growth has been faster than overall payroll growth under President Trump.

Even so, manufacturing’s prior relative employment creation has been so weak that the sector still remains a laggard on this front for the recovery era as a whole.

Since bottoming out in February and March of 2010, manufacturing has regained 1.389 million (60.58 percent) of the 2.293 million jobs it had lost during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Overall private sector employment sank by 8.785 million during the downturn, but since then has regained 20.608 million jobs.

Manufacturing keeps trailing the overall private sector on the pay front, too. In December, pre-inflation manufacturing wages rose by 0.26 percent – considerably slower than the overall private sector’s 0.40 percent.

Year-on-year, current-dollar manufacturing wages are up by 1.98 percent – their best such performance since September, 2017 (2.18 percent). Between the previous Decembers, manufacturing hourly pay before inflation has advanced by 1.75 percent. But overall current-dollar private sector wages improved by 3.15 percent year-on-year in December.

In fact, since the current recovery began, in mid-2009, pre-inflation manufacturing wages have improved by only 18.60 percent. Overall private sector wages are 24.12 percent higher.

Moreover, the gap has been widening. The above figures show that, as of the latest data, private sector wages had grown 29.68 percent faster than manufacturing wages. As of the previous December, the difference was 24.80 percent.

Manufacturing’s pay performance looks even worse after adjusting for inflation. The latest data are from November – when manufacturing’s sequential increase (0.37 percent) actually topped that of the private sector (0.19 percent). (December’s won’t be published until the middle of this month.) But the November figures also show that, whereas private sector wages inched up year-on-year by 0.84 percent, manufacturing paychecks actually dipped by 0.27 percent.

Indeed, real manufacturing wages are cumulatively down by that amount since February, 2016 – meaning that, technically, they remain mired in a long recession (two or more date quarters of net deterioration).

Moreover, during the current economic recovery, inflation-adjusted manufacturing wages have risen less than a tenth as fast (0.47 percent) as private sector wages (4.95 percent). And the gap has widened significantly over the past year, when it stood at a 0.75 percent real wage increase for manufacturing versus a 4.07 percent rise for the private sector overall.

Following Up: Lousy U.S. Auto-Making Productivity and Those GM Layoffs

Tags

automotive, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Detroit automakers, General Motors, GM, Jobs, layoffs, motor vehicles, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, productivity, total factor productivity, Trade, Trump, yoFollowing Up

Yesterday, I posted some data – with a special focus on major victim state Ohio and major victim region Youngstown – providing some badly needed perspective on General Motors newly announced manufacturing jobs layoffs in the United States (along with Canada and other unspecified locations). Today I’d like to follow up with some statistics that shed more light on GM’s decision – and the strengths and weaknesses of the American domestic automobile industry.

There’s no doubt that, as widely noted, many trends and developments are responsible for the new job cuts – which are highly unlikely to be restricted to GM alone. Some of the biggest include changing product mixes (away from smaller vehicles and toward larger vehicles), new technologies (for electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles), and the inevitable waning of the latest “automotive cycle” – that is, a slowdown in auto sales that has been entirely predictable following the sector’s strong recovery from a terrifying downturn during the last recession.

But one industry trend that’s been sorely neglected – and that surely bears heavily on the “Detroit 3” auto companies’ failure to continue producing smaller vehicles profitably at their domestic factories (the plants targeted for closure) – concerns its productivity performance. In a word, it’s been lousy – which supports last week’s post presenting evidence that U.S. metals-using industries like automotive have been using crutches like (foreign government-subsidized and therefore artificially) cheap raw materials, along with massive job and production offshoring, to juice their profits rather than efficiency-enhancing improvements resulting from creating new technologies, investing in new machinery, devising better management techniques, or some combination of these measures.

That post last week featured data showing that the American transportation equipment sector (which of course includes auto manufacturing) has performed relatively well during the current U.S. economic recovery and the previous expansion – though the rate of growth decelerated over that time span. These periods were examined because they were marked by a tremendous increase in American imports of steel over-produced and dumped into the United States by foreign producers, which pushed steel prices way down for reasons having nothing to do with free trade or free markets.

But more detailed statistics make clear that the automotive sector per se lately has fared worse when it comes to total factor productivity – the broadest of two measures of productivity tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the productivity measure I examined last week.

During the 2001-2007 American expansion, total factor productivity in the motor vehicles sector actually grew faster than that for transportation equipment overall – 22.70 percent versus 13.38 percent. But from the 2009 start of the current recovery through 2016 (the latest available data), vehicle makers’ total factor productivity advanced by only 2.53 percent – that is, much more slowly than the 9.67 percent improvement registered by transportation equipment overall.

In fact, since achieving a huge (15 percent) snapback in total factor productivity during the recovery’s first year following a deep (12.29 percent) nosedive during the recession, vehicle-makers’ total factor productivity fell by 10.94 percent through 2016. As a result, its total factor productivity hasn’t improved on net since 1989.

Also interesting: Since the U.S. ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 created a bright green light for automotive production and job offshoring, total factor productivity in American motor vehicle-making is up by only 9.20 percent. That’s a considerably slower rate of progress than for manufacturing overall (20.13 percent), even though automotive trade has figured so heavily in U.S. trade flows with fellow NAFTA signatories Mexico and Canada so far.

I don’t mean to minimize the challenges all automotive manufacturers face given the multi-dimensional crossroads that seems to be arriving rapidly for the sector. What should be glaringly obvious, though, is that they’re unlikely to be met adequately – including producing smaller vehicles profitably, especially if and when oil prices start rising again – with a productivity performance that barely qualifies as second-rate.