In April, President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise and ordered the Commerce Department to conduct a “Section 232” review of steel imports. A provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Section 232 authorizes the gov-ernment to take action to limit imports of products if they threaten national security.
During a recent road trip, I encountered two bridges under repair. Both bridges had only one lane open, necessitating a way to alternate the flow of traffic. At the first bridge, that task was handled by two flagmen, one on each end. At the second, traffic was controlled by a pair of portable, automatic gates.
The regulatory rollback has begun. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump vowed to overturn “job-killing regulations” enacted by the Obama administration. To his credit, he is now following through.
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to bolster U.S. manufacturing; slash the corporate tax rate; build a wall on our southern border to keep out illegal immigrants; and invest more than $1 trillion to upgrade the nation’s aging infrastructure.
Thirty years ago, if you had told me that Bob Dylan would win the Nobel Prize for Literature or that the president of the United States would be able to influence corporate manufacturing decisions through an electronic medium called “Twitter,” I would not have believed you. But, to quote The Bard, “The times, they are a-changin’.”
Later this month, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, and a raft of policy changes are sure to come. Among others, the president-elect has vowed to roll back proposed regulations covering power plant emissions, contending that they will hurt the economy and put U.S. industries at a competitive disadvantage.
Lumps of coal go to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for giving us a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. An extra lump goes to The Donald for running a campaign that set new lows in civil political discourse.
A persistent theme in the business press is the presence of a skills gap in America. Thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs are unfilled because there are simply not enough qualified workers.