On Dec. 2, President-elect Donald Trump wrote:
I am totally opposed to the once great and powerful US Steel being acquired by a foreign company, in this case Japan’s Nippon Steel.
So we would expect him to dislike foreign investment in the United States, right?
Wrong. Donald Trump seems to want more foreign investment. In “Why Trade Should Be Free,” Defining Ideas, October 30, 2024 issue, I wrote:
President Trump recently appeared at the Chicago Economic Club and said he wants to impose high tariffs on foreign companies to move production to the United States. In other words, he wants more foreign direct investment.
If you click on his speech in the link directly above, it will take you to around 11:30. So he says foreign companies just need to build factories here to avoid tariffs. Do not buy plants here. Oh my god. Build plants here. He never explains why he wants foreign investors to build but not buy.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance previously understood why the Japanese government was good for the United States by allowing foreign companies in Japan to buy domestic companies that were in danger of shutting down. Reason’s Eric Boehm wrote on December 19, 2023, quoting a passage from Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy:
“The Kawasaki Heavy Industries merger represented an inconvenient truth: American manufacturing is tough business in a post-globalized world,” Vance wrote. “If a company like Armco is going to survive, it’s going to have to restructure its organization. Kawasaki gave Armco an opportunity, and Middletown’s flagship company probably wouldn’t have survived without it.”
Unfortunately, Vance seems to have forgotten. He needs to read Hillbilly Elegy and refresh his understanding.
Why do I say Donald Trump is attacking U.S. Steel? Because he doesn’t want to allow the owners to sell. After all, he is attacking their property rights.
