Saw on Bloomberg Toyota to spend $2B after Trump attack. Sounds good but was this money already committed or is this a legit increase in investment due to Trump?
Make America great again!
The protectionism and infrastructure plans probably will increase national investment, but at the expense of international opportunities. Think of this as more of a trade tariff that sends money to some workers who will get the jobs, but will increase costs to other Americans.
Anyway, Japan is an interesting case with respect to bilateral trade, since it is a large economy with labor costs that are comparable or higher than those of the US. In many ways, it is still backwards in innovation and work technology. So, there is a lot of opportunity for the US to sell IT solutions or financial services to Japan, without loss of jobs in manufacturing or other industries. This isn’t really related to the Toyota factory.
From what I have seen the bulk of the things Trump is taking credit for have been plans in place for quite some time, but if I were a corp exec i would certainly stroke trumps ego and allow him to blow some hot air in hopes I would get some good PR and the chance at gaining some power in his government that looks more and more like crony capitalism got direct control.
if you can make it look like you folded to trump’s demands once, you will have more public support when you inevitably have to defy him in the future.
first paragraph is very spot on.