Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“A company that spurned talent it badly needed couldn’t thrive. The same is true for a country.
But that isn’t stopping the Trump administration from blithely driving foreign students into the open arms of other countries with its ill-advised immigration policies.”
“In a recent paper on the issue, my Mercatus Center colleagues Matthew Mitchell and Michael Farren did the math and found that “the $3.6 billion in taxes needed to fund the subsidies will likely decrease Wisconsin’s long-run GDP by about $20 billion over the 15-year life of the handout. And this estimate doesn’t include the local utility infrastructure, and federal subsidies that total another $1.4 billion.” These numbers are harder to sell to taxpayers than the la-la land ones we hear about before every big subsidy deal.”
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“A new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Cailin Slattery of Columbia University and Owen Zidar of Princeton University looks at state and local business tax incentives and finds yet again that narrow, firm-specific tax breaks aimed at attracting businesses and boosting employment aren’t the way to go. The study shows that larger, more profitable companies are more likely to get bigger handouts. The largest deals benefit the recipients, according to their research, but not the overall state economy.”
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“This study is only one of many on the topic. They all find that these narrowly targeted subsidies don’t work as advertised and are typically counterproductive. Unfortunately, a slogan like “subsidized projects aren’t worth the money you pay for them” doesn’t make for a great sound bite at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.”
“Allegheny Technologies, which employs about 100 people, is the type of company that is especially vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs. It imports stainless steel slab from Indonesia and turns it into sheet metal, which it then sells to other manufacturers who incorporate it into car parts, kitchen appliances, and more.
Being in the middle of the supply chain is rough when you’re also in the middle of a trade war. Companies like Allegheny Technologies have to pay for Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel, and then have little choice but to pass on that cost increase to their customers. But, as Wetherbee laments, that makes it difficult for a company like his to compete against foreign manufacturers who can make and sell sheet metal without having to account for an extra 25 percent import tax.
Buying American doesn’t work, either, since U.S. steel is more expensive. One domestic supplier, Wetherbee writes, “quoted us a price for 60-inch slabs that was so high, the raw materials would have cost us more than we charge for the finished product.””
https://reason.com/2020/01/13/adding-jobs-but-not-housing-is-a-recipe-for-urban-unrest/
“Economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, who describe their study as “as the first comprehensive estimates of the effect of recent tariffs on the US manufacturing sector,” argue that the data shows that any benefits from protection from foreign competition have been more than canceled out by retaliatory tariffs from trading partners and an increase in the cost of components sourced from abroad.
As a result, US manufacturing has seen job losses and higher prices for consumers.”