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Straight Talk

By James Hettinger
Senior Advisor, Battle Creek Unlimited
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During the past election even my iron-lined stomach could not take much more of the juvenile mollycoddle that dominated the so-called “issues” part of the campaign. Not only was it irrelevant, but the continued carpet bombing of distortion and misperception is very bad for the American thinker, assuming we have many left.

The past campaign was dominated by oversimplified and pedestrian nonsense designed to capitalize on the weaknesses of voters rather than their strengths. Here are some of the platitudes and my responses to them:

• The Michigan economy is victimized by unfair trade agreements. That is correct; however, as long as our country insists on using political hacks as negotiators, sitting across the table from our trading partners who only employ the brightest and most specialized trade negotiators, the outcomes will be the same. After we sign the trade agreements, we wonder why our enforcement weasels are not more effective. That is because they were outsmarted months ago.
• China is stealing “our” jobs. One politician after another blames China for Michigan’s economic ills. In fact, vilification of China has been such a bountiful political strategy that our immediate past governor was not among the thirty-three other governors who have visited China over the past four years to build business relationships and to promote the respective products of their states to Chinese consumers.
  
  This whole phony argument masks the important reality that American jobs are lost, first and foremost, to technology and productivity improvements. “Our jobs?” One cannot hear that phrase without smelling the bad breath of entitlement. Jobs are not and never have been an entitlement. “Our” jobs are perpetually up for grabs. When “our” jobs are done better by Brazilians or Malaysians, they will no longer be “our” jobs.
  
  Of course, no politician, particularly, one from Michigan is prepared to address the loss of “our” jobs to Tennessee, North Carolina or Texas. Those are the competitors economic development practitioners confront every day, not China. The final dance in the China mash consists of the backgrounds in campaign commercial videos of empty factories, looming bleak and unwanted. In fact, two out of every three jobs lost to globalism are white-collar jobs. These are working people too. Many have families. Or do their white collars mean they are getting their just due?
• Every politician promises to end “outsourcing.” From a policy standpoint, we cannot even identify what outsourcing is or define it. Should a company be prevented from sending various operations to an outsider if it means savings and increased efficiencies? Who, on earth, is capable of making such rules? Many of the politicians dead-set against outsourcing in the economic context are perfectly happy if our citizens continue to outsource their individual responsibilities and obligations to a burgeoning government. They have happily constructed a giant governing apparatus that is only too happy to usurp the responsibilities and freedoms conceded by an increasing number of people in society. If a politician is going to stop outsourcing, that politician better know how they are going to do it and not just in the economic context.

The validity of these points was recently vindicated when President Obama went to India and announced one trade deal after another. The president said the trade deals mean 54,000 new American jobs. Suddenly, post-election, trade is good. Trade leads to jobs.

A few weeks later, boom! We have a new trade agreement with South Korea, a strong ally but a fierce economic competitor. Suddenly, post-election, trade is good. Trade leads to jobs.

This is something economic development practitioners have known for years. Americans producing goods and services sold overseas are generally compensated at rates 15-20 percent higher than the national income average for their respective sectors. Plus, American companies that compete globally tend to be better in many other standards of measurement.

At the state level, we can only hope that Gov. Snyder and his administration pays some attention to Michigan’s role in the global economy. Sixty-two percent of the mergers and acquisitions that are taking place in our country involve foreign money. It would be astute to have a seat at this table, not to mention a better strategy for competing with other states as well as the Province of Ontario.

It does not take getting hit in the head by an Asian Carp to know that the electioneering definitions of international trade are for the benefit of politicians and not for the betterment of people. Increasingly, economic development is about human development. You cannot promote economic and human development in the barren soils of entitlements and human victimization.

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