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This is a severe misstep
Trump recently met with Harold Daggett, the President of the Longshoremen’s Association, and issued the following statement:
Donald J. Trump (via Truth Social)
Just finished a meeting with the International Longshoremen’s Association and its President, Harold Daggett, and Executive VP, Dennis Daggett. There has been a lot of discussion having to do with “automation” on United States docks. I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it. The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt, and harm it causes for American Workers, in this case, our Longshoremen. Foreign companies have made a fortune in the U.S. by giving them access to our markets. They shouldn’t be looking for every last penny knowing how many families are hurt. They’ve got record profits, and I’d rather these foreign companies spend it on the great men and women on our docks, than machinery, which is expensive, and which will constantly have to be replaced. In the end, there’s no gain for them, and I hope that they will understand how important an issue this is for me. For the great privilege of accessing our markets, these foreign companies should hire our incredible American Workers, instead of laying them off, and sending those profits back to foreign countries. It is time to put AMERICA FIRST!
This is completely contrarian to putting “America First.”
There is no benefit to using extremely overpriced, overpaid, and less efficient humans when the technology exists to perform at a much higher level at a much lower cost.
An analogy might be to propose that farmers eschew modern combines, work manually, and get paid more for their harder efforts and less efficient production.
Elon, Vivek: please chat with the boss about this error.
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The way Donald Trump portrays this, it’s only those greedy foreigners who are hurt by keeping the process of loading and unloading ships expensive. But this cost will be passed on to the consumers. Even if you think that only suppliers have their costs driven up, what about the American companies that export products? Yeah, I know, China has surpassed the USA as the world’s largest exporter. We still export a lot.
I think the longshoremen’s union should be consistent, and ban all mechanization. No more forklifts or cranes – all cargo should be handled with just manual labor.
Trump is being foolish and very un-conservative about this. His pick for Labor Secretary is another indication of his fondness for Leftist positions in this area.
I don’t think this is a yes-no situation.
Trump campaigned in 2016, during which time he listened to Americans in every walk of life. Then he was president for four years. Then he spent the next four years listening to Americans again. I have to give him some credit here for having some knowledge of the many facets of this important issue in the eyes of most of the stakeholders.
The truth is that in some areas of the dock work, robots and other computer-driven equipment will be beneficial to everyone involved. In other areas, it will not be.
I have confidence that his actions will benefit Americans significantly.
This is the type of calculation where MBAs really shine. They plot the data points on stunning graphs and identify the breaking points according to the goals expressed by the organization’s leaders. We can charge this much for McDonald’s quarter pounders and still maintain this volume of sales. One penny over and our volume will decrease by this much. :)
You can bet that the union president is calculating how he can get the maximum number of dues-paying union members. He’s not trying to plot out the way to get the work done most cost-effectively.
If you want inefficient, get rid of containerized cargo. It should just be dudes carrying boxes and bunches of bananas up gangways ;)
Yeah, I wondered how many longshoremen it would take to lift and move those containers.
The longshoremen’s union has kept U.S. ports inefficient and costly compared to other ports world-wide. They’re like a Mafia organization – for all I know, they are controlled by the Mafia – and its president has a salary of nearly a million dollars a year.
No, this is not a group that Trump should be caving in to.
Sometimes the operative issues are the rate and pace of change.
Americans subsidize innovation and change through our unemployment compensation programs. We do have a stake in the rate at which automation causes employment shifts. So do the companies who pay into the unemployment programs as well.
I am sure that the new Trump administration will intercede when the rate of automation becomes so fast that the unemployment insurance program and the health insurance COBRA program that kicks in for unemployed people cannot keep up.
Just as is true of tariffs, these will be complicated equations.
Change will happen. We cannot stop it. We can only manage it. I’d rather have practical Republicans doing that, people who know how to use a calculator. :)
Are you familiar with mechanized gates? You know, the ones that open when you drive up to them? I’m familiar with them because my late husband was a pilot, and airports often have gates like these. That’s the kind of drastic change and innovation the longshoremen’s union opposes – yeah, you gotta hire a guy at 5 – 6 figures to open and close the gate.
There’s no way, Marci, to make a silk purse out of this pig’s ear.
It would have been ever so nice for the OP to include the context in which Trump issued this statement. That being that …
The Longshoremen’s Association has been in contract renegotiation talks with the U.S. Maritime Alliance for a while now. In October, 45,000 longshoremen went on a strike that, thankfully, only lasted 3 days. The deadline for an agreement is January 15. If no agreement is reached, a more prolonged strike and serious economic disruption would follow. The more prolonged, the more serious.
Trying to lessen the odds of that happening, which is what Trump’s statement is obviously about, is not a “severe misstep”. On the contrary, it is what a President is supposed to do.
So, the president is supposed to cave in to the threat of strikes by any and all unions, and take their side?
That is an important context to add. The
LongshoremanMob is extorting the US to remain in control, getting overpaid, while demanding that readily available modernization and technology be banned, to keep their monopoly.I recall Reagan firing all of the air controllers in a similar situation. I understand your premise, that Trump is saving us from a dock strike. But the solution is worse when kicked down the road. That is typical Washington pol process.
We voted for a disrupter. Temporary pain is often part of the path to a healthier and wealthier nation.
Either you believe in the efficiency of free markets or you don’t.
Maybe Trump thinks he has enough on his plate and this is one thing that can wait.
Is labor not part of the free market?
I have major questions regarding this premise when the size of organizations increases without limits.
And then there are plenty of times, as your own statement acknowledges by the use of “often”, when the wiser course of action is to avoid inflicting yet another pain unto a nation that already has plenty of them to deal with.
In the olden days, you could get a bunch of illegal aliens to do this kind of work.
No doubt. But the longshoremen union’s position is starkly against helping the U.S. compete effectively with other countries. It is a thug union and should be opposed, not caved in to.
I am willing to concede that Trump is playing 7D chess, and has made this statement on TRUTH, to temporarily avoid a strike on Jan 15th. Then he will hammer them. Pffft. NAH, just kiddin.
The historically conservative position is that the free market is vastly superior to any individual, or group of individuals, no matter how smart or well intentioned, at sorting these things out. Trump’s statement (in the OP) could have been (and was) made by Barack Obama.
Trump has always been a mixed bag, and this is the poison the Right has chosen to swallow to fight the cancerous Left. I accept that trade-off, but I fully acknowledge that is a trade-off.
I’m dismayed at the number of “conservatives” — of both the pro- and anti-Trump varieties — that now characterize policies conservatives have long opposed as “wise” and/or “conservative.” Trump may be the hero we need, but at some point, I hope to see us get back to following principles rather than men.
I remember the exact moment when George W. Bush lost me — when he said “We have to abandon the free market in order to save it.” I’m reminded of that often these days.
So, that’s why we need Trump for 4 years, then Vance for 8.
It’s an odd question. Labor is a component of an economy, whether that economy is free or managed/controlled/coerced.
Possibly. (I’m taking a wait-and-see on Vance.)
Given his pick for Labor Secretary, who wants to force right-to-work states to unionize and who favors strengthening public sector unions (and whose pick was applauded by the ghastly teacher union president Randi Weingarten), this seems to me to be more than just a blip.
I agree. Trump will get plenty of feedback on these positions he has taken.
Feedback from whom? And do you think he will listen?
I agree with you, Freeven, and I am concerned about Trump’s statement. However, it has also always been the historically conservative position to support Free Trade. The problem with that position is that it failed to acknowledge that while the USA offered free trade to our partners, they were kicking us in the hind with their tariffs and obstacles to USA products competing in their countries. Trump saw that happening and saw our country becoming a “service” economy that was losing its important manufacturing jobs and rapidly becoming unable to produce any products that not only our consumers, but even our military, needed for daily operations. Rules sometimes need to be changed. In this situation, I am willing to allow some slack to President Trump. Hopefully sooner, rather than later, Trump will be able to take a breath, look around, and say, “OK, now about those Longshoremen and our ports…” For now, I tend to side with GPentelie. We do not need to start this administration with a shutdown of our economy. A strike by the Longshoremen would have the same economic effect as a pandemic.
Containerized cargo is one of the greatest innovation in global commerce since the steam engine. Trump is wrong, in my opinion, to oppose it.
I expect to be disappointed from time to time. I think Trump has never been particularly conservative, which makes his terrific first term something of a mystery — one I hope to see repeated in his second term. I’ll take the wins I get, and give what I hope is measured criticism when he makes what I think is a bad call. I’d say this qualifies as a bad call.
A consummation devoutly to be wished … by all who pine for Trump’s Presidency to stumble right out of the gate and remain hobbled.