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Nigel Southway's avatar

Steve

Great stuff and I look forward to your book…

I am the author of Take Back Manufacturing, and my Substack talks to that.

In principle I agree with what Trump is trying to do but am somewhat dismayed with his process and approach.

I believe we have globalized our trade and financialization processes far too much and must go back to trade blocs and nations grouped into economic unions such as the whole of North America for example. We must lock out all trade and financial transactions outside of this bloc and focus on keeping all value inside the bloc.

I therefore don’t believe another multilateral global trading token like the Bancor is the way to go as we have far too large a wealth gradient between the west and the rest for any significant trade to make sense unless they are essential materials that cannot be mined or grown inside the bloc. All value adding effort must stay inside the bloc. It’s the only way to maximise the economy inside the bloc.

It needs to be agreed that trade outside the bloc is to be abhorred as trading is not a god given right to expect from another and its only an option if it benefits the recipient and its clear that it has not done that for the west in the past as its bred labor arbitrage driven by the freedom of national capital placed in the hands of corporations that went transnational.

Your math which I am not an expert at does reinforce that situation... and its clear that we need to bury the free market thinking most of economists used to screw us up and rebalance the capital and labor in each nation as its clear that as long as people need to work to live and try to build capital to stop working they need a better balance and that is what trump is doing.. I just wish he followed a better implementation process that does not confuse the heck out of everyone.

Let me know what you think of my position.

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