For Your Consideration
On Oct. 30, 2024, the Commerce Department issued a news release headlined, “Manufacturing Boom Thanks to Biden-Harris Investments.” The story noted manufacturing contributed $2.62 trillion to the nation’s economy and over 700,000 manufacturing jobs created during the four years of the Biden administration.
This positive story was intended to promote the Harris campaign near the election. The story got major coverage on news broadcasts and daily newspapers.
In an earlier column I listed many major national and international firms announcing major expansions or new investments in manufacturing since Trump took office. At the time of that article, new or expanding manufacturing investments were nearing one trillion dollars. Today, the total announced new investment are exceeding two trillion dollars but where is the media coverage of the fact that Trump, in less than 100 days in office, has nearly as much industrial expansion that the Biden administration had in four years?
Four firms have announced projects totaling over $100 billion - Apple, NVIDIA, and Project Stargate, have announced investments of over $500 billion each and Taiwan Semiconductors Mfg. $100 billion in new plants in the U.S. (A complete list of major industrial investments is attached onto the end of this article.)
Under the Biden administration, manufacturing was about 10.3 percent of the nation’s GNP. The massive increase in industrial investment in the last 90 days is clearly going to greatly increase these numbers dramatically and over a million new high-paying industrial jobs as well as construction jobs are bound to have a positive effect on the economy.
This begs the question why has this industrial boom not been covered in greater detail by the media? One answer is clearly media bias, but a secondary reason is a general lack of economic understanding by the media and the public in general.
To say the country is now over $36 trillion in debt is a number most people can hardly imagine. In numbers, that is 36 followed by 12 zeros or $36,000,000,000,000! The government pays $582 billion in interest funding this debt which is now about 16 percent of the total federal spending.
The national debt has grown dramatically due to unexpected events (wars, Covid, natural disasters, etc.) but also expanded government programs. I t is more popular to spend more on government programs than to make cuts. The situation with the Department of Government Expenditures (DOGE) illustrates this.
Most people think the government is too big and spends too much but when it comes to making cuts, each target a rea h as i ts d efenders. T he number of federal employees has the government unions and the Democrat Party to fight cuts.
Opponents of budget cuts know it is hard to attack a program but easy to target an individual, in this case, the head of DOGE, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk has become the target for vilifying by Democrats. As a result, Musk received death threats and Tesla cars and dealerships have been firebombed and cars vandalized (interestingly a vast majority of Tesla owners are Democrats and Musk only owns about 20.5% of the Tesla Corporation!).
Sadly, Democrat politicians are dodging condemning these criminal actions their party has seemed to encourage.
Nearly every program cut, or individuals removed from federal employment, have been met with vast coverage. Seems any cut program impacts someone, somewhere dramatically and any mistake made gets extensive coverage even if the mistake was corrected.
The country’s economy needs to grow dramatically, and government spending reduced, or major impacts will s oon b e f elt. F or e xample, Social Security around 2033 will have to reduce payouts by about 25 percent unless something is done. Medicare funding runs into similar problems by 2031—and total insolvency in 2052! The good news is for the first time in years we have an administration really trying to cut government spending and promote economic growth.
Trump is currently tackling the negative balance of payments using tariffs. He has begun negotiations as if asking for the stars but willing to accept the moon but trying to pick up a few of the solar system planets for a win. How successful he will be remains to be seen but in any case, it has been the start of the most impressive first 100 days since FDR. Some good news and thoughts for your consideration. - And here’s that list of other firms announcing billion dollar investments: Johnson and Johnson ($55 billion); Roche ($50 billion); Eli Lilly Co. ($27 billion); ADQ/Energy Pardners ($15 billion); Norvartis ($23 billion); Hyundai ($21 billion); DAMAC ($20 billion); CMA CGM ($20 billion); Merck ($8 billion); Clarios ($6 billion) Stellantis ($5 billion); Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ($3 billion); NorthMark Strategies ($2.8 billion); Chobani ($1.2 billion); and GE Aerospace ($1 billion) Schneider Electric ($700 million); GE Vertova ($600 million) Abbott Laboratories ($500 million); AIP Management ($500 million); Diageo ($415); Eaton Corp. ($340 million); Siemens ($285 million); Clasen Quality Chocolate ($230 million in Virginia creating 250 new jobs!); Fiserv ($125 million); Paris Baguette ($160 million); TS Conductor ($134 million); ABB ($120 million); Saica Group ($110 million); Charms ($97.7 million); Toyota ($88 million); Aero-Vironment ($42.3 million); Saint-Gobain ($40 million); Sygene Intl. ($36.5 million); Asahi Group Holdings ($35 million); Cyclic Materials ($20 million); Guardian Bikes ($19 million); AMG Critical Minerals ($15 million); NOVONIX Ltd. ($4.8 million); LGM Pharma ($8 million); and VIDARR ($1.8 million in Virginia).
Smaller investments are not listed but Small Business Administration (SBA) in the last 90 days has approved over 650 manufacturing loans totaling over $677 million and expected to create over 10,000 new jobs.
