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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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Discussion (193)
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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.
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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.
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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. :)
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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.
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If you want inefficient, get rid of containerized cargo. It should just be dudes carrying boxes and bunches of bananas up gangways ;)
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