A couple of questions on ad hoc policy

[dreamville_bg]

Okay, I get it, Trump is basking in his glory from scoring an early win on his promise to keep US jobs at home. He has talked Carrier into staying in Indiana rather than running off to Mexico for profit - which has earned him applause by locals. And some raised eyebrows from both libertarians and the business itself. The issue with such individual

Comments

[mahnmut]

You reap what you sow. That's all I have to tell America right now.

[johnny9fingers]

It's not America reaping it's own harvest the rest of the world is worried about, it is more about how many adjoining fields, or even non-contiguous fields, are left with burnt stubble.

[oportet]

Maybe our diplomatic procedures need to be reexamined....

Our leaders haven't called their leaders in forty years, but in the same period we've sold them around $45 billion worth of weapons?

I can see where doing both, or doing neither makes sense. I could also understand phone calls without arms deals. But arms deals without phone calls... what were Obama, W, Clinton, HW, Reagan, and Carter thinking? Did they just assume a phone call with Taiwan would piss off China more than selling them missiles and helicopters and tanks and shit? (even if they ended up being correct, it never struck anyone as backwards?)

[dreamville_bg]

What about the Carrier case. Should government change the way it interacts with the market as well?

[oportet]

Incentives for staying and disincentives for leaving would work short term - but like you said, in the long run - probably not. Unless they have a plan for when it goes wrong - I'd say either don't do it, or don't announce individual deals publicly (will that ever be an option with him?) and give other companies ideas on how to work the system.

[garote]

It's very hard to push through all the bluster and bullshit storming at us from news sources about this deal.
In fact, the sheer level of bluster and bullshit is prompting me to disengage with it completely as a source of any meaningful policy decisions or precedent. The negotiations have been brewing for at least a year, without any input from Trump. If Trump hadn't been elected the deal would have still gone through. Now suddenly it's in our faces 24-7 like it means something about him. What a farce.

This is a small-potatoes bit of pork-barrel negotiation, like happens every month in this country. There is no precedent, there is NO POLICY, there is no hand-wringing or shouting to be done. Fuck it. Fuck the whole thing.

[abomvubuso]

Ah, the magic wand phone approach. Because that's how you reform entire industries.

[luvdovz]

Trump sure is saving jobs - look at all the wonders he's been doing for comedians' and cartoonists' jobs so far.

[policraticus]

Would these hurt America in the long run, rather than help it

[garote]

"being a tone-deaf clod" is not "negotiating from strength", even if it is somehow a Bene-Gesserit-style wheels-within-wheels operation or whatever. Give me eight more years of No Drama Obama thank you very much.

Oh well....

[policraticus]

No Drama Obama

The citizens of Aleppo were unavailable for comment.

[garote]

How do you suppose El Presidente Trump would have handled that?