Trump’s jobs strategy offers ‘cheap sugar rush,’ expert says

Haft, author of Unmade in China and CEO of SafeSource Trading, said Trump’s expected tariffs and corporate subsidies are a “cheap sugar rush” with inscrutable results.

Trump has taken credit for decisions from companies, such as Ford and Carrier, to keep factories and jobs in the U.S. His administration lauds them as victories against outsourcing business to countries like China and Mexico.

Haft disagrees with this interpretation. “It feels good, and it’s a sugar rush, to say, ‘Hey, let’s kick China, let’s kick Mexico,’ when in fact, by kicking China and kicking Mexico, we’re kicking ourselves,” he said.

Haft figures the jobs saved in Indiana for Carrier cost approximately $7 million in tax subsidies. “Those are some pretty expensive jobs,” he said.

“We saved a scintilla of a fraction of a fraction,” he said, of our 160 million person U.S. workforce.

Case-by-case deals with specific companies may have positive-sounding results in the short term, Haft said, but real results of such changes are harder to see.

Haft offers the steel industry as an example.

“By raising tariffs on steel, you’re actually forcing downstream companies to buy cheaper steel overseas.” If these companies buy American steel, they become less internationally competitive. Instead of strengthening small businesses, “It has kind of the reverse effect,” he said.

This strategy could be blocked by Congress or even fought in court by the companies it targets, if they can prove harm, according to Haft, noting the plan is “totally uncharted territory.”

Haft goes on to explain how these plans won’t be unique to America. Countries like China already execute these tariff plans on the U.S., he said, and America mimicking it will only empower them to do it more.

The economic statistics tracked by many politicians and the media are outmoded relics, Haft said.

Tariff and subsidy plans like the one put forward by Trump rely on these simple job and trade imbalance numbers, but these numbers fail to count the “true dynamism and competitiveness of the U.S. So in fact we are strong, we are resilient, the numbers just don’t reflect that,” said Haft.

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