(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The AP’s Manufactured Nonsense About Manufacturing

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AP, Associated Press, Calvin Woodward, fake news, innovation, Jobs, manufacturing, productivity, research and development, technology, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Associated Press (AP) is a ginormous global news organization, and its reach is especially widespread here in the United States (although I couldn’t find figures breaking out its American clientele specifically). So it’s a big deal when one of its highest profile writers spreads the kind of utter claptrap about domestic U.S. manufacturing that Calvin Woodward just peddled in his new piece on President Trump’s views on the economy.

In an article posted today, Woodward portrayed Mr. Trump’s emphasis on industry (and other elements of his worldview) as nothing more than a pathetic and downright dangerous exercise in nostalgia for the “grunt work of old” that ignores how “Industry, technology and much of the culture are finding new ways of doing and living” and how “U.S. prosperity has been driven for decades by services, technology and new things….”

Some confidence in Woodward’s conclusions might be justified if he relied on manufacturing specialists or even economists to support them. But the authorities he cites are a “professor of communications” and a psychologist who “studies nostalgia from Britain’s University of Southampton.”

Not that economists have been killing it in recent decades in properly evaluating the importance of manufacturing. But if Woodward had bothered to consult one,  the odds would have been higher that he’d have encountered the idea that industry is kind of important for any country seeking to build or maintain a world-class military. Or” that it’s historically been the U.S. economy’s leader in productivity growth (although as RealityChek regulars know, it’s recently been losing its mojo on that score). Or that it boasts one of the nation’s biggest employment multipliers – meaning that the creation of each American manufacturing job generates an outsized number of jobs elsewhere in the economy compared with employment increases in most other sectors. Or that manufacturing accounts for the lion’s share of American business research and development spending. 

That last fact is especially important for Woodward and others of his ilk to know. For it makes clear that if the United States is to keep generating the “technology and new things” that of course are central to its hopes for continued (much less greater) prosperity, it has better keep its manufacturing base world class.

I’ll leave it to you to judge whether Woodward’s article qualifies as Fake News.  But there can’t be any legitimate doubt that it’s manufactured nonsense.   

Those Stubborn Facts: Innovation Machine?

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Bell Labs, IBM, innovation, National Affairs, Oren Cass, Silicon Valley, tech, Those Stubborn Facts

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers at Bell Labs: 8

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers at IBM: 5

Number of Nobel prizes won by researchers funded by a Silicon          Valley firm: 0

 

(Source: “Putting Dynamism in Its Place,” by Oren Cass, National Affairs, No. 39, Spring, 2019, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/putting-dynamism-in-its-place)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Big Messages Being Sent by a Jetsons-Like Invention

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Aeolus Robotics, automation, capital spending, Consumer Electronics Show, Democrats, domestic workers, economics, Fight for 15, Immigration, innovation, Jobs, minimum wage, offshoring, Open Borders, robots, Roomba, Rosey, technology, The Jetsons, Trade, Washington Post, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Along with the rest of the world, I just got another reminder that the future is arriving a lot faster than most of us expect. And that’s got especially big implications for related points I’ve long been making about U.S. immigration policy and efforts to boost the country’s minimum wage.

For many years, when I’ve spoken about immigration policy, I’ve used the following argument to explain the relationship between the mass immigration America has fostered for so long (including winking at illegal immigration) and the productivity gains and technological progress needed to ensure that living standards can improve in a sustainable (not bubbly) way:

“Does anyone remember Rosey, the robot maid on the 1960s TV cartoon show, ‘The Jetsons’? Did you ever wonder why, decades later, there’s still no Rosey – or anything better than a Roomba? A major reason has to be that, with so many legally and illegally present housekeepers and housekeeper candidates available, and willing to work so cheaply, there’s been little incentive to automate domestic work.”

It was my way of using pop culture to illustrate why a big spur to technological progress (and the higher productivity it tends to bring) for the United States in particular has been the scarce labor situation that’s existed for most of American history. With workers in chronically short supply, and therefore increasingly expensive to hire, U.S. businesses were constantly looking for labor saving devices that could cut their costs. And American inventors were terrific at seizing the opportunity and providing them.

In other words, the U.S. economy was behaving exactly the way the textbooks said it should. When labor became too costly, business stepped up its search for ways to substitute capital (which often meant) technology, for those overly dear workers. More recently, as labor has become more abundant (and therefore, all else equal, cheaper), this dynamic has often shifted into reverse.

Incidentally, mass immigration policies aren’t solely to blame. Offshoring-friendly international trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and similar trade policies (like coddling China’s trade predation) have also greatly expanded the amount of workers realistically available to American employers, especially in sectors like manufacturing. And it’s surely no coincidence that business spending on equipment and machines and the like (called capital spending) has been a notable weakness lately in the U.S. economy. (In fact, although many factories in China are automating rapidly – because of wage increases – this report makes clear that labor surpluses are still slowing its pace in some important Chinese manufacturing industries.)

What has this to do with Rosey? Simple. As this Washington Post piece from last week shows, she’s here – or just about here. For at the latest annual Consumer Electronics Show (one of the tech industry’s major events), a company called Aeolus Robotics unveiled a device that looks awfully similar. According to the Post reporter, this “child-sized” machine

“performed domestic duties such as mopping, picking up stuffed animals off the floor and moving furniture, and, perhaps most impressively, retrieving drinks from the fridge using an intricate-looking grabbing arm — all without human assistance.”

The robot – billed as “the first multi-functional robot that can act like a human being” – still doesn’t crack wise in a New York accent, like the cartoon Rosey. But how far off can that be?

Technology and labor costs hardly move in lockstep, and of course innovation results from many causes. But economic theory, anyway, is saying that my view on the cost and supply of domestic workers is becoming outdated. Common sense also suggests that if something like Rosey is just about here, then domestic workers aren’t as cheap and/or as abundant as I believed. So their wages may well have been rising strongly enough lately to create demand for an automated counterpart.

At the same time, the advent of “Rosey” (and how many other devices like “her” just over the horizon?) amounts to a frantically waving red flag about the wisdom of any immigration policy moves likely to increase the supply of poorly-skilled workers in the American economy – which is to say, any proposals supported by the national Democratic Party and the rest of the country’s Open Borders enthusiasts. Just what kind of work can they be expected to find? Indeed, the automation progress represented by “Rosey” signals that much of the existing workforce in the nation is going to be increasingly hard-pressed to secure or hang onto decent-paying jobs.

Similarly, although I believe there’s still a strong economic (and moral) case for a national minimum wage that tracks inflation, the seemingly impending dawn of the Age of Rosey raises big questions about the wisdom of the kinds of minimum wage jumps sought by the “Fight for 15” campaign and other activists.

“Rosey’s” appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t mean that I’ve come down one way or the other in the vital debate taking place today over whether all this recent technological progress ultimately will be a net job killer or creator. But it seems clear as a bell that this tech wave is being completely ignored by the Open Borders and the Fight for 15 backers, and that Americans closest to the low end of the wage and income scale are likely to be among the biggest victims.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Real Promise – & Pitfalls – of Foxconn’s New US Manufacturing Plan

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assembly, Carrier, components, flat panel displays, Foxconn, incentives, innovation, Jobs, manufacturing, Paul Ryan, productivity, regulatory reform, Scott Walker, subsidies, tariffs, tax breaks, tax reform, Terry Gou, Trade, trade policy, Trump, Wisconsin, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Sorry for the recent absence – and during an incredibly newsworthy period!  There’s been lots of important economic data released recently, which I’ll be reporting on in upcoming days.  So what to focus on in this return offering?  One recent story that seems to reflect many of the biggest developments and trends of the Trump administration’s first six months is the announcement this past week that the Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn will be spending $10 billion to build a new factory for flat panel displays in southeastern Wisconsin. 

Think this is a stretch?  Then consider this:

The announcement, which could become a big win for the American economy – and a big feather in the president’s cap –was completely upstaged by a series of White House personnel shakeups orchestrated by Mr. Trump himself.

Moreover, the Mainstream Media accounts invariably combined their longstanding hostility to the president with their instinctive rejection of the possibility that unconventional economic ideas and policies can have any merit. 

For instance, they uniformly focused on the job-creation effects of the new factory – which, as typical for capital-intensive products and industries, will be relatively modest – to portray the news as ruse by the president to convince voters that he was keeping his campaign promise to revive manufacturing employment.  Their main evidence?  The tax breaks and other subsidies the project would receive, which came to many thousands of dollars per position, which were easy to depict as a first class boondoggle.

Further, the media uniformly depicted employment as the only possible upside to strengthening the nation’s high value manufacturing.  Its major contributions to the economy’s productivity growth – which could use a major helping hand – and to its innovative capacities, were completely ignored. 

At the same time, the reporting overlooked crucial questions that need to be answered to assess whether the new Foxconn factory will live up to its promise.  Principally, will it be engaged in components production – where so much of manufacturing’s value-added comes from?  Or will it simply be assembling final products from imported components, as has been the case with other recent foreign electronics investments?  If the latter, the subsidies it’s garnered will be much more difficult to justify.  And in this vein, have either federal or Wisconsin authorities imposed any conditions that would encourage genuine manufacturing?   

Not that the Foxconn announcement completely vindicates globalization policy critics, either – or at least not those who, like me, have insisted that manufacturing revival that matters will require a thorough recasting of American trade policy.  I’ve been especially skeptical of the idea that jaw-boning a la Trump plus some subsidies could make a real difference – though I’ve insisted since Mr. Trump as president-elect intervened in the Carrier company’s decision to offshore Indiana manufacturing jobs that his use of the bully pulpit could greatly aid the welcome transformation of America’s approach to manufacturing that he seemed to have in mind.  And for the record, I’ve been skeptical that subsidies can be decisive, either – because America’s financial support for manufacturing was so unlikely even to approach the scale of, say, China’s. Finally, I’ve never thought that the kinds of regulatory reform efforts Mr. Trump has launched would matter much, either, given that so many potent American trade rivals are practically regulation-free.  

At this early stage, the jury is still out.  But since the Foxconn announcement has hardly been unique, and no significant changes have taken place in U.S. trade policy other than a withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the president so far is doing a pretty good job of proving me wrong.

Nonetheless, I’m still confident that, sooner rather than later, the manufacturing needle won’t be moved without imposing trade curbs of some kind.  Although avowed fiscal conservatives like House Speaker Paul Ryan (of Wisconsin) and his state’s governor, Scott Walker, enthusiastically supported the Foxconn incentives package, their appetite for such measures – even when reduced taxes are involved — is likely to be limited for other parts of the country because of their budget-busting effects.  Indeed, it looks like Ryan may wind up accepting a smaller corporate tax cut in Congress’ tax reform package for precisely this reason.  Moreover, these breaks could easily be offset by similar moves by foreign governments – and added to existing predatory practices like currency manipulation and tariffs of their own.  And I remain convinced that a high-income country, first world country like the United States can never rely heavily on deregulation to compete better against very low-income, largely regulation-free third world countries like China or Mexico. Nor should it want to. But no initiatives could match the power of policies that would limit or close off access to the world’s greatest economic and commercial prize by far, the American market.

In fact, as Foxconn’s CEO has strongly suggested, the threat of U.S. tariffs helped persuade him to promise to manufacture much more in America.  And he’s hardly alone in the corporate world, as I’ve reported.  That’s why I’m somewhat worried about the administration’s reluctance actually to impose tariffs, as opposed to threatening them.  If Mr. Trump keeps hemming and hawing about steel tariffs, and if he keeps opposing ideas like the border adjustment tax, which has just been stripped from Congress’ tax reform package, America’s competitors could easily conclude that his trade policy is largely bluff, and that they can keep using Americans as customers and not workers after all.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where Trump Deserves High, Low, and “Incomplete” Marks on Germany Trade

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advanced manufacturing, automotive, commodities, comparative advantage, Financial Crisis, Germany, Global Imbalances, Great Recession, innovation, manufacturing, productivity, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade surpluses, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As I’ve suggested, President Trump has big, valid points to make about Germany’s auto trade with the United States. Not only does America run an enormous deficit with Germany in vehicles and parts, but claims that Germany deserves great praise from Washington because it makes so many vehicles in the United States are completely unjustified. For they overlook its companies’ very low levels of U.S. content and only very modest improvement on this score. That is, German vehicles are overwhelmingly screwed together in the United States, and therefore add much much less value to the American economy than autos made with domestic parts.

The trouble is that America’s troubles with German trade policies greatly transcend the automotive industry and, to a great extent, Germany. I’ve previously written that there’s a fundamental problem that both the administration and it’s critics are missing:  Germany’s economy, like China’s and many others around the world, is simply not structured in such a way as to make mutually beneficial trade with the United States possible.

But there’s another big U.S.-Germany trade issue that needs highlighting, along with a major danger that Bonn’s approach to trade is creating for the entire world – at least in the medium or long-term.

That other U.S. Germany trade problem has to do with the makeup of bilateral commerce. If you look at the nature of what the United States trades most successfully with Germany and vice versa, you find that the former category contains a mix of high value manufactures and commodities, while the latter is dominated by advanced industrial goods. Here are lists of the sectors in which America last year ran its biggest trade surpluses and deficits with Germany. (To the surplus list should be added – prominently – aircraft, which are not counted accurately in the U.S. International Trade Commission database I’m relying on.)

Top ten U.S. trade surpluses with Germany: 

glass products 

tree nuts 

soybeans 

computers 

non-costume jewelry 

non-anthracite coal & petroleum gases 

fin-fish products

computer parts 

surgical appliances and supplies 

pulp mill products 

 

Top ten US deficits with Germany

autos and light trucks 

pharmaceuticals

goods returned from Canada 

motor vehicle transmissions and transmission parts

aircraft engines and engine parts

construction machinery

miscellaneous general purpose machinery 

miscellaneous basic org chemicals 

miscellaneous engine equipment 

motor vehicle parts

These results are disturbing because, contrary to the superficial conventional wisdom, if you take seriously standard trade theory and its core concept of comparative advantage, sectoral trade balances matter tremendously. For the main idea behind the freest possible international trade is structuring the world economy so as to enable those countries most proficient at producing various goods and services to dominate their output. So surpluses and deficits in different industries show which countries are passing and failing this test – and thus which countries look likely eventually to control worldwide supplies of the sophisticated goods that create so many high wage jobs and foster so much innovation and productivity growth.

Since the U.S.-Germany data aren’t U.S.-global data, in theory they could be anomalies. In other words, Americans could be doing better with the world as a whole, and therefore, the nation’s prospects in high value industries could be a lot brighter. Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. The makeup of U.S.-Germany trade isn’t terribly different from the makeup of U.S. global trade, in that America’s trade winners are, again, a mix of commodities and high value goods (again, including aircraft), and its losers are nearly all advanced sectors.

Top ten US surpluses globally

petroleum refinery prods

soybeans

special classification goods

plastics materials andcresins

waste and scrap

corn

liquid natural gas

semicaonductor manufacturing equipment

non-poultry meat products

turbines and turbine generator sets

 

Top ten US deficits globally

autos and light trucks

crude oil and natural gas

goods returned from Canada

broadcast and wireless communications equipment

computers

pharmaceutical products

telecommunications equipment

audio and video equipment

aircraft engines and engine parts

games, toys, and children’s vehicles

Yet Germany also is contributing significantly to a major trade-related threat that threatens the entire world, not just the United States. I’ve repeatedly spotlighted blue chip academic research concluding that unprecedented global imbalances centered on American trade shortfalls were instrumental in setting the stage for the last global financial crisis and the painful recession that followed. Worse, evidence keeps accumulating that international commerce is becoming worrisomely lopsided again, and that Germany’s overall international surpluses – currently the world’s largest – have generated much of the problem.

Indeed, a valuable reminder came in this morning’s Washington Post:

“[G]ermany is one of a number of countries, including China, Japan, and South Korea that are now saving far more than they are either consuming or investing….At some point, the world will be unable to absorb the capital surpluses of Germany, China and others, leading to another painful correction that might undermine the liberal order.”

Interestingly, Germany itself has indirectly acknowledged these risks, and hinted that it recognizes some responsibility to get the surpluses down. Unfortunately, Berlin has demonstrated few signs of following through. So although some of President Trump’s focus on the German trade issue seems off target, it’s also clear that the sense of urgency he’s brought to the issue, from both an American and global standpoint, is not only appropriate, but necessary.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! No More Excuses for the H1B Visa Tech Immigrants Program

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Ananya Bhattacharya, Glad I Didn't Say That!, H1B, immigrants, immigratiion, innovation, Jobs, Qz.com, tech workers

“Trump’s crackdown on H-1B visas could prevent the next US unicorn born of Indian immigrants”

–Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz India, February 5, 2017

Share of Indian engineering graduates capable of writing “the correct logic for a program, a minimum requirement for any programming job”: 4.77%

–Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz India, April 20, 2017

(Sources: “Trump’s crackdown on H-1B visas could prevent the next US unicorn born of Indian immigrants,” by Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz India, Februay 5, 2017, https://qz.com/900729/trumps-crackdown-on-h-1b-visas-could-prevent-the-next-us-unicorn-born-of-indian-immigrants/ and “Fewer than 5% of engineers trained in India are cut out for high-skill programming jobs,” by Ananya Bhattacharya, Ibid., April 20, 2017, https://qz.com/964843/less-than-5-of-india-engineers-are-cut-out-for-high-skill-programming-jobs/)

Following Up: More on Why Tariffs Can Bring Back Much U.S. Manufacturing

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Andrew Grove, China, Defense Science Board, exports, Following Up, Foxconn, globalization, innovation, Intel, manufacturing, offshoring, reshoring, subsidies, tariffs, Trade

What a shame that David Barboza’s New York Times article on all the help from government in China that powerfully shaped Apple’s investment decisions was published during the holiday week – when so many Americans are paying so little attention to the news . A Pulitzer-worthy piece of reporting, it also adds to the abundant evidence debunking two critical claims often made about the globalization of manufacturing.

First, the article makes clear how much offshoring of American industry has taken place due to foreign government decisions that clash violently with the idea of “free trade.” And second, it exposes further weaknesses in a related, though more recent, claim that most offshoring during the 21^st century has stemmed not from foreign tariffs and similar interventionist economic policies, but from technological innovations that enable effective management over far-flung international manufacturing operations. This second claim is especially important, since it’s also been used to demonstrate that American tariffs will be unable to reverse this offshoring significantly.

Apple’s chief manufacturing partner in China, Foxconn, claims that the government supports it receives in the PRC are “no different than similar tax breaks all companies get in locations around the world for major investments.” And Barboza mistakenly seems to confirm this argument, characterizing China’s various market-distorting practices as “not unlike” those “in other countries, “including the United States, where states and cities vie for companies” – except that they are much greater in scale and much more secretive.

But the author himself provides key examples to the contrary. For instance, the Chinese province in which Apple’s manufacturing is concentrated is actively encouraging Foxconn to export. And when the company meets these targets, it gets hefty bonuses. Exports were also fostered via rebates for the value-added tax Foxconn would otherwise pay for at least the first five years of its operation.

Nor was China’s central government simply a bystander. Of course, the value of its currency was manipulated – which artificially lowered the price of goods China exported (including those from factories affiliated with foreign companies like Apple) and raised the price of imports for Chinese individual and certain business consumers. But there was also this scheme described by Barboza:

“Since China began opening its economy to the outside world in the 1980s, the government’s policies have encouraged manufacturing and exports with the creation of special economic zones. But those same policies have discouraged domestic consumption of overseas brands.

“Most products made in China by big multinationals had to be physically shipped out of the country and then brought back so that they could be taxed as imports — hence, the U-turn employed by many companies.”

Revealingly, these arrangements stayed in place well into the 21^st century, and similar export-focused zones can still be found all over China.

Barboza’s reporting also bears out arguments I made in a post last week on this subject – that technological change has been a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the export of advanced manufacturing capacity, and that much offshoring was encouraged by the guarantees of wide-open access to the U.S. market provided by trade policy decisions like backing China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

As the author notes, “When Apple first moved into China, the country was largely a low-cost production site.” That was in the late-1990s. He also quotes a former long-time executive for Wal-Mart and other multinationals as stating that most of these firms’ China investments represented “supply chains good at making things in the East and selling them in the West.”

China’s domestic market has of course developed impressively since then. But as I observed last week, the continuing importance of exports to these firms’ business models has been spotlighted by their loud protests of Donald Trump’s plans to erect trade barriers against production they aim at American customers.

But it’s also crucial to point out that this initial offshoring of production set in motion a dynamic with huge future implications for America’s economy and for today’s claims about “knowledge-based” offshoring of scientific and technical knowhow – and jobs – that supposedly are immune to trade policy overhaul. Simply put, the offshoring of production made the export of manufacturing’s more knowledge-based activity inevitable in case after case.

The two main reasons: First, super low-cost developing countries are full of smart, people that are highly educable, and trainable by multinational corporations; and second, manufacturing production and innovation rarely exist in isolation. Their relationship is typically interactive, and fueled by continuing and close contact between the researchers and engineers and product designers etc who come up with new products and processes, and the production supervisors and other workers who need to translate their ideas into real world products.

And don’t take my word for it. Listen instead to the late Andrew Grove, founder of Intel. Or Hank Nothhaft, retired Chairman and CEO of Tessera Technologies. Or former Allegheny Technologies executive Jack Schilling. Or the Defense Science Board (both quoted in this 2010 study).

In other words, Apple has found success in locating its manufacturing “brain work” thousands of miles from its production work.  But that formula appears to be the exception, not the rule, in manufacturing, including in advanced manufacturing.  And interestingly, this tech giant has recently announced it’s building its first two research and development centers in China.  

So the United States has a fundamental choice ahead of it.  It can keep listening to multinational companies and their hired guns, pretend that the keys to long-term prosperity move around the world purely or even largely due to market forces, and run ever greater risks of sliding into second-class status.  Or it can finally recognize Washington’s immense potential power over globalization, and use it to make sure this process works for its own citizens and domestic producers as well.    

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Signs that US Trade Policy Needs a Total Rethink

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anti-trust policy, Bloomberg, China, CNBC.com, competition, economic concentration, innovation, monopolies, Noah Smith, oligopolies, Peter Thiel, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, trade policy, Trump, White House Council of Economic Advisers, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s obviously just a coincidence, but it was a heartening development anyway. Soon after I made an unconventional (but urgently needed!) observation about the relationship between trade policy and domestic anti-trust policy, two items came out in the news showing that some big shots in the economics and business world – including a key adviser to Donald Trump – have been thinking about the same subjects.

My point, made briefly in my recent op-ed for CNBC.com, noted that backers of current trade policies seemed much more concerned with maximizing economic competition and its benefits by opening the U.S. market to more foreign entrants than by countering the rise of monopolies and oligopolies at home. For centuries, of course, economic thinkers have been telling us that the more producers of goods and services enter a market, the more fiercely they need to vie with each other for sales, and the more pressure they feel to innovate, to raise quality, and to lower prices. Therefore, creating the greatest possible levels of competition has long been a main objective and rationale for seeking the freest possible international trade flows.

But last spring, as I wrote, the White House Council of Economic Advisers came out with a study reporting that American levels of business concentration in many sectors of the economy have become worrisomely high. In other words, too many monopolies and oligopolies have emerged lately, slashing the number of businesses competing for customers and threatening to boost prices and depress quality and innovation more than would otherwise be the case.

The result, I argued, was a downright weird, and logically indefensible situation: Washington has been working overtime, in recent decades in particular, to promote competition by bringing more foreign entrants into the U.S. economy. But it’s also largely turned a blind eye to (and arguably at times encouraged) business deals inside that same U.S. economy that lowered the numbers of domestic participants and therefore weakened competition.

Given all the other problems I’ve linked to current trade policies, I suggested that these priorities have been completely backward. More competition is definitely a benefit. But why such apparent doubt by supporters of these trade policies that the gargantuan American economy can create adequate levels all by itself if government pursues vigorous anti-trust policies? Why such apparent determination to ignore how focusing on maximizing domestic competition ensures that the main corporate benefits – more competitive companies and all the jobs and production they’d be able to generate – remain in the United States? And why the great reluctance to acknowledge that much of the foreign competition admitted into the U.S. economy is either owned, controlled, or heavily subsidized (or some combination of the three) by foreign governments? Their successes clearly distort economic activity in the United States and abroad, and longer term, undermine free markets and the gains they can produce everywhere.

That’s why I was so interested to read this week of new academic findings that American companies that have faced greater Chinese competition lately have cut all kinds of new investment – including on research and development. In other words, they’ve became less innovative. As explained by Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, economists have never ruled out the chance that greater foreign competition could undermine corporate innovation – e.g., because firms suffering consequently lower profits would have fewer resources available to pay for laboratories and tech workers. But scholars much more often assumed that greater trade competition would produce the opposite results.

Of course, the new research could mean that fostering greater domestic competition could produce the same innovation-curbing results. But perhaps it’s also reasonable to suppose that removing or reducing the foreign competitive pressures and increasing the domestic pressures could strike the best possible combination of benefits. I’ll be watching this front closely for answers to these crucial questions.

Another fascinating take on these issues is coming from Peter Thiel, the noted Silicon Valley magnate and adviser to President-elect Trump. According to a December 13 Wall Street Journal article:

“Mr. Thiel has spoken out against free trade and remains skeptical of globalization—worrisome for a tech industry that gets most of its revenue overseas. He wrote in his 2014 book, ‘Zero to One,’ that globalization enables the developing world to copy existing technologies, which he says is unsustainable and inferior to finding new technology solutions.”

So Thiel, too, seems to be saying that freer trade undermines innovation. But his solution – or rather, the combination of solutions he’s recommended – is novel to say the least:

“Mr. Thiel says government can play a central role supporting big tech projects such as the Apollo space program. He views monopolies as a positive force for the economy, which could portend weaker antitrust enforcement.”

To complicate matters further, Thiel describes himself as a libertarian.

It would be tempting to conclude from these items that no one with any standing in economics and business knows anything definitive or even useful about the relationship between trade and competition anymore. But let’s not forget the potential bright side. For decades, trade theory has been one of the most stagnant, encrusted area of economics (and the punditry and chattering class conventional wisdom it’s spawned). Clashing findings could signal that obsolete sacred cows are finally starting to be challenged. For me, few developments could be more hopeful.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Manufacturing Should Indeed be a US “Obsession”

Tags

Binyamin Appelbaum, Donald Trump, Federal Reserve, innovation, manufacturing, manufacturing production, manufacturing wages, multi-factor productivity, multiplier, productivity, research and development, STEM workers, The New York Times, Trade, Trade Deficits, {What's Left of) Our Economy

You have to give New York Times economic correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum credit. He decided to go the flood of recent media attacks on trade policy critics one better by not only charging that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and others are economic know-nothings, but belittling them for an ignorantly nostalgic focus on American manufacturing. Less admirable – Appelbaum’s decision to broach the subject before learning anything important about it, or much of the broader economy.

In an October 4 Times Magazine article, Appelbaum repeated standard claims that American politicians’ “obsession” with manufacturing misses the mark because the sector is doing better than ever, and because its only major problem is actually a sign of progress – its falling payrolls reflect higher productivity, and thus outstanding technological progress. His new wrinkle: a contention that U.S. leaders should spend less time trying to revive manufacturing employment (and wages, which have lagged badly, too?), and more on turning the low-wage service sector jobs into family wage jobs.

But Appelbaum’s own assessment of manufacturing badly misses the mark. His claim of record output, for example, is belied by Federal Reserve data clearly showing that industry’s output is down 4.45 percent in real terms since the Great Recession started – more than eight years ago. Nor does Appelbaum seem familiar with the productivity figures. They show manufacturing’s performance stagnating recently by the broadest measure (multi-factor productivity).

Industry’s record in international trade is another flag that’s at least deep orange. Manufacturing keeps racking up record annual trade deficits, and yesterday’s U.S. government figures revealed that August saw the latest in a string of monthly record shortfalls. These trade balances matter because standard trade theory teaches that one of international commerce’s main virtues is fostering the best possible international division of labor. By its logic, America’s failure to produce anywhere near as many manufactures as it consumes – including in numerous high-value industries like semiconductors, advanced telecommunications gear, pharmaceuticals, construction equipment, machine tools, and ball bearings – unmistakably signals that such activity has a grim future in the United States.

And if such pessimism is warranted, the entire American economic picture will look grim as well. For no other sector appears poised to replace manufacturing as the nation’s productivity growth champ. And it’s hard to identify major new employment prospects for science and technology workers if manufacturing continues stagnating (at best). After all, the sector conducts 70 percent of the private sector’s research and development, and its STEM workers comprise 60 percent of the national total.

Moreover, this funding and these workers seem to be doing an awfully good job on the innovation front, as they generate nine out of every ten U.S. patents.

But perhaps strangest of all is Appelbaum’s call for downplaying efforts to foster manufacturing employment and dramatically raising the wages and improving the living standards of America’s fast-food workers, home healthcare aides and the like via government fiat. At least he recognizes that such steps will have nothing to do with the free market principles so widely used to justify laissez-faire approaches to manufacturing’s woes. But why does he evidently suppose that productivity improvements and especially technological innovation won’t displace many of these jobs, too, especially if employment costs get high enough? And what kind of formula for boosting national competitiveness – and therefore hopes for longer term, sustainable prosperity – would this be?

Ironically, promoting domestic manufacturing looks like the best, most market-friendly way to help these low-wage workers, too. For the sector boasts the economy’s greatest multiplier effect for overall economic activity (which by definition creates new jobs) and one of the largest for employment itself. In other words, manufacturing punches far above its weight in generating new jobs throughout the rest of the economy (e.g., in transportation, construction, retail, and wholesale). Even better, most of these sectors already pay considerably more than those singled out by Appelbaum – and without new government props.    

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Evidence on Faltering Productivity Growth

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capital intensivity, Great Recession, innovation, Labor Department, labor productivity, multi-factor productivity, productivity, Robert Gordon, technology, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Amid the din of this year’s presidential campaign, the U.S. economy keeps slogging along. And I do mean slogging. One big reason was highlighted last week by the Labor Department: Its latest read on the broadest measure of productivity shows that, according to this gauge of efficiency, America keeps falling considerably short of its historical standards. And if productivity growth is going by the boards, so too are the nation’s best hopes for boosting living standards in a sustainable, as opposed to bubbly, way.

The new data cover multi-factor productivity – i.e., how much output the economy generates from using a wide range of inputs, including labor, capital, energy, and materials. Unfortunately, these statistics are not released in as timely a manner as those that simply measure labor productivity, and so the new numbers only present the final results for 2014. But since the economy didn’t exactly take off growth-wise in 2015, there’s no reason to believe that upcoming numbers will change this discouraging story greatly.

Labor’s new release isn’t devoid of good news. The final multi-factor productivity gain for 2014 – 0.7 percent for private non-farm businesses – was much better than 2013’s performance (when it shrank by 0.1 percent). The newest increase was also bigger than the annual 0.4 percent average for the 2007 to 2014 period.

But the final 2014 figure represented a slight downgrade from the previously reported improvement of 0.8 percent, and the final 2013 number was revised from a 0.9 percent gain to that small decrease. Moreover, multi-factor productivity’s 2014 growth was less than half the rate achieved between 1995 and 2014, and even lower than the 1987-2014 annual average rate of one percent.

Also disturbing about the new multi-factor productivity release: For all the excitement generated by the internet revolution, social media, and the like, technological advance seems to be playing an ever smaller role in what productivity gains the U.S. economy is recording. Indeed, the “capital intensivity” of America’s private non-farm businesses fell in 2014, and has now slipped for three of the last four years. These have been the only annual decreases over the entire 1987-2014 period during which the Labor Department has tracked multi-factor productivity.

Indeed, these results seem to support the views of Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon, who contends that recent technological innovation hasn’t had nearly the life- (and productivity-) enhancing impact of earlier advances – like the automobile and indoor plumbing. Similarly, they appear to confirm findings that American businesses lately haven’t been investing either many of their own profits or the mammoth foreign capital flows being received by the U.S. economy with a focus on meaningfully upgrading their products or their industrial processes.

As I’ve written before, even the most high-handed economists tend to agree that productivity is a concept they don’t measure with great confidence. And forecasts about trends as important as “the future effects of technology” deserve major skepticism. But considering how slow America’s growth has been since the Great Recession ended, and how the latest credible projections point to further deceleration, it seems increasingly clear that the productivity gains the nation is achieving aren’t resulting in adequate growth, and long-promised tech miracles remain promises.