The CNN article has made it clear that protecting US-made cars and
therefore American jobs are not easy. Tariff could certainly give
US-made cars a kind of price advantage. But there are other problems
such as supply-chain for all the parts needed to make cars. The same for
other manufacturing products.
Besides, it would be difficult to protect US made cars and jobs in the
absence of healthy infrastructures, especially railways.
"...there is another huge factor threatening the rebuilding of America’s industrial base...
In order to make stuff in the U.S., you must be able to efficiently
transport not just finished goods to consumers but also lots of heavy
raw materials and components to your factories. For example, making EV batteries in the U.S. requires making synthetic graphite, and making
synthetic graphite requires transporting huge volumes of feeder stock
like coal tar or petroleum coke, which are by-products of steel
production and oil refining. You can’t use trucks to move that much
heavy material for more than short distances—not even trucks running on battery power. You need freight trains.
Yet our freight rail system is melting down. After being deregulated in
1980, freight railroads merged into a handful of giant monopolistic
systems that became highly profitable. Those profits, plus the lack of regulation, in turn attracted financiers who over the past decade have
taken control of major railroads and forced them to adopt a new
predatory business model. Financiers are maximizing short-term profits
and returns to shareholders by effectively liquidating the rail system
through radical downsizing and degraded service, all while further
damaging the prospects for American manufacturing by charging higher and
higher freight rates.
To deal with their diminished capacity and crew shortages, railroads
have frequently imposed embargoes—refusals to accept new traffic—causing freight to stack up in warehouses and in railcars that remain stranded
in yards and sidings for days and even weeks. At one point in 2023,
millions of chickens faced starvation because of Union Pacific’s failure
to deliver animal feed trains on time. Shippers who depend on railroads
are often reluctant to voice public criticism for fear of retaliation,
but through their trade associations they describe systematic breakdowns
in service that prevent them from growing."
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/10/29/train-drain/
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