On April 18, Pres. Donald Trump visited the Kenosha, Wisconsin, headquarters of Snap-on to speak in front of an American flag made of the company’s tools and publicly sign an executive order titled “Hire American, Buy American.”
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On April 18, Pres. Donald Trump visited the Kenosha, Wisconsin, headquarters of Snap-on to speak in front of an American flag made of the company’s tools and publicly sign an executive order titled “Hire American, Buy American.”
The order itself is small beans — it just orders four federal agency heads (Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, and State) to “review” policies and recommend changes that tend toward hiring and spending domestically instead of abroad. But such changes would just increase Americans’ cost of living (and their taxes) rather than “saving Americans’ jobs.”
In his signing remarks, Trump complains that “for too long, we’ve watched as our factories have been closed and our jobs have been sent to other faraway lands.” He omits both the reasons for manufacturing moving abroad and the effects of manufacturing moving abroad.
Capital tends to flow to where it can be most profitably invested. There’s no secret conspiracy to deprive Bob in Wisconsin of gainful employment so that Li can have a job in Shenzhen.