Is the Stock Market Crazy? powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/… via @powerlineUS
Longer term, the coronavirus will benefit the U.S. economy. The virus has demonstrated that President Trump was right all along: outsourcing a huge percentage of our manufacturing capacity to China was dumb.
It was especially dumb with regard to pharmaceuticals. But with regard to any non-trinket product, China’s low wage rates are at best a dubious trade-off against low productivity, low quality, transportation costs, and unforeseeable disruptions
The trend toward bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. was already underway, but it will accelerate and become permanent as a result of the coronavirus. That is a good thing, for us.
A year or two from now, I think this month’s stock market decline will be more or less forgotten. The real question, I suppose, is whether it will be forgotten by November. I think so, but that is a closer question.
I am pretty certain that in less than ten years, coronavirus will be seen as a turning point that favored the U.S. economy over that of China and perhaps other third-world countries. Let’s hope that becomes clear by the Fall.
