October 18, 2024

Evolution is natural and outside human control. Therefore, it is inappropriate and impossible to turn back evolution. That is as true socially as biologically.

Yet the attempts to undo globalized trade are an attempt to turn back evolution. Global trade was as inevitable as wheeled transportation. There was no way to prevent trade across national boundaries; and with modernized communication and computerized transactions, globalization occurred automatically.

So when international trade rules were modernized, it was a response to a process that already existed. Those rules were critically important in reducing problems in international trade.

When Trump got involved in the process, he corrupted the result in two major ways. First, he decided he would get a better deal by beating up everyone else. Then he decided that he would reverse the process of globalized trade by bringing the manufacturing back while using such gimmicks as tariffs.

The result is a disintegration of globalized trade that is destroying economies on a global scale—first and foremost the U.S. economy, as supply chains are being destroyed.

There was no right way to impose Trump's motives onto the process, because evolution cannot be turned back to primitive methods. Evolution is always positive and constructive, because only beneficial processes get promoted in evolution. Then to attempt to reverse the process not only turns the clock back to more primitive methods, it destroys the gains that resulted from the evolved processes. That means the result is not the same as it was earlier but a nonfunctional result.

That fact jumps out in the attempts to "bring the manufacturing back." Trying to reconstruct earlier concepts of manufacturing destroys the process due to absurd requirements.

One of the major factors is that globalized trade resulted in vastly increased customers and sales on a global basis. It also meant more narrowly defined specialization resulting in the equivalent of broadly diverse companies splitting into many specialized companies.

Turning the clock back on manufacturing is an attempt to re-establish a small customer base for a company that is not specialized enough to meet the high tech requirements that replace more primitive technology. In other words, sticking bolts in holes is no longer what manufacturing consists of. Now days microprocessor controled equipment is needed. With the increased complexities supply chains are multiplied requiring hundreds of different suppliers scattered around the world.

Missing all of that is beyond stupidity. Presidents cannot be a bag of motives who hug the right persons. They need to be competent in a modern, high tech world, or all they can do is destroy everything they touch.