On December 2, President-elect Donald Trump wrote:
I’m completely towards the as soon as nice and highly effective U.S. Metal being purchased by a international firm, on this case Nippon Metal of Japan.
So you’ll count on that he would dislike international funding in the USA, proper?
Unsuitable. Donald Trump says he desires extra international funding. In “Why Commerce Needs to be Free,” Defining Concepts, October 30, 2024, I wrote:
In his current look earlier than the Financial Membership of Chicago, Trump mentioned he desires to impose excessive tariffs in order that international companies will transfer their manufacturing to the USA. In different phrases, he desires extra international direct funding.
In case you click on on his speech within the hyperlink immediately above, go to concerning the 11:30 level the place he says that to keep away from tariffs, international corporations want solely construct their vegetation right here. Not purchase their vegetation right here. Oh, no. Construct their vegetation right here. He by no means explains why he desires international traders to construct, however not purchase.
Vice-President-elect JD Vance used to grasp why it was good for the USA if the federal government allowed international corporations in Japan to purchase home companies that had been in peril of shutting down. As Eric Boehm of Purpose wrote on December 19, 2023, quoting a passage in Vance’s guide Hillbilly Elegy:
“The Kawasaki merger represented an inconvenient reality: Manufacturing in America was a troublesome enterprise within the post-globalization world,” Vance writes. “If corporations like Armco had been going to outlive, they must retool. Kawasaki gave Armco an opportunity, and Middletown’s flagship firm in all probability wouldn’t have survived with out it.”
Too unhealthy Vance appears to have forgotten it. He ought to refresh his understanding by studying Hillbilly Elegy.
Why do I say that Donald Trump is attacking U.S. Metal? As a result of he doesn’t wish to permit its homeowners to promote. In the end, he’s attacking their property rights.