Tweet

Shawn Donnan

11 Mar, 12 tweets, 4 min read

@BW

Biden’s about to test just how much bipartisan backing there is for a new American industrial policy. But the forces he’s taking on in his bid to boost manufacturing aren’t just political...

My latest for ⁦@BW⁩:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

One big hurdle: How do you make producing in US cost-competitive?

GE Lighting last week shut down a line at its plant in Bucyrus, Ohio, that made LED bulbs. They spent a year and millions trying to make it cost-competitive. And the company says they just couldn’t...

Another: In all likelihood the dollar is going to appreciate significantly in the coming year or two as the economy accelerated faster than others. That’s going to hit the bottom line of folks producing in America for export markets.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@JoeDeaux

Manufacturing jobs and recessions also don’t have a good history, as @JoeDeaux and I pointed out a few weeks ago. Every recession since the 1970/ has seen the U.S. fail to recover the factory jobs it lost in the downturn...

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

One reason for that is obviously the march of technology. You just need less people to produce more stuff. Recessions cause companies to focus even more on costs and productivity.

But we also live in an era of perpetual industrial revolutions... And even having a domestic supply chain doesn’t guarantee a mass of new jobs. I find Model No. a fascinating company. Furniture made from food waste?!?! model-no.com

It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens with innovation/industrial policy and manufacturing employment in the US not just in the next four years but in the next 10-20.

But it’s also worth remembering that industrial policy has a pretty good history in the US.

That vaccine you’re waiting for? It wouldn’t have been possible without the human genome project, which was born in US government labs. The internet connection you’re using to work from home? Government project...

Detractors often point to failures like Solyndra, the solar company that went bust after getting DOE loans in the Obama years. They don’t often mention that Tesla received government loans under the same program...

There’s a fiduciary responsibility governments have to protect taxpayer funds. It’s never good to waste or lose public money... But maybe the federal govt needs to act a bit more like a venture capital firm when it comes to industrial policy and investing in strategic sectors?

Would the US benefit from having something like a sovereign wealth fund with a brief to invest in the future? A pot of public money that could not just help seed startups but benefit the public when those startups soared?

Anyway, we’ve got an interesting few months of policy debate coming here in the US...

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More from @sdonnan

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

25 Feb

And we're off with Katherine Tai's confirmation hearing... Chairman Ron Wyden kicks it off with a call for "smarter, stronger" US trade policy... "Four more years of mean tweets and chaos from the White House won't cut it..."

finance.senate.gov

@USTradeRep

Here's five questions I'd like to see senators ask @USTradeRep nominee Katherine Tai:

bloomberg.com/news/newslette…

Interesting shot fired by Mike Crapo in his opening statement re the Biden plan to hit the pause button on new trade deals. He's pushing for Biden to go forward with a deal with the UK. Now pointing to China and RCEP... He's calling for "energetic and effective" trade policy.

Read 42 tweets

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

25 Feb

Today in why context matters...

The initial jobless claims data out this morning points to what some are calling a "sharp fall" in weekly claims.

Claims last week were 3.5x what they were a year ago. The 4-week moving average was almost 4x.

And that doesn't include special programs set up in response to the pandemic that the latest data show covering >12m of the >19m in the US claiming or receiving unemployment benefits.

Another bit of context: 19m is the population of New York state.

@joebrusuelas

Another bit of context:

The decline was largely due to the extreme weather that hit a large swathe of the US last week, as @joebrusuelas points out here: realeconomy.rsmus.com/initial-jobles…

Read 5 tweets

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

24 Feb

@JoshuaChaffin

Been thinking about this lovely piece by my former colleague @JoshuaChaffin... My initial take on the 5 I’d invite to dinner was: Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Jan Morris. Nina Simone and Tim Flannery (Aussie polyglot). But I’m having doubts.

Your 5?

ft.com/content/75f76d…

My main qualm is I’m worried that I have too many ornery people on my list... I’m pretty sure I’d just end up in a corner talking to Jan, Nina and Tim while Philip and Don grunted at each other in a corner.

Then again I bet Don mixes a mean Old Fashioned... And Philip would bring a nice bottle of wine...

Read 6 tweets

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

6 Oct 20

If you scratch the surface of this economic crisis it’s not hard to find the legacy of the last... In Cleveland you can find it in the churn in ownership of rental properties in Black neighborhoods. One house we looked at traded hands 7x in two years... 1/ bloomberg.com/news/features/…

11410 Clarebird Ave was essentially owned by two families between 1975 and the early 2000s.

It peaked in value in 2004 at $93k.

Last year it sold to its current owner, a company called BL US1 LLC, for just over $65k.

In other words in 15 yrs it lost a third of its value.

Who is behind BL US1 LLC? All we know is that it is a French investor... Yes... French... And the $900:month rent meant they were getting a 16% gross annual return on their investment... 3/

Read 9 tweets

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

2 Sep 20

@BW

Economics is about people. So if you want to understand an economy you have to talk to its people.

Since late March I've been speaking to people in Ambridge, PA, a place that once was called Economy.

This @BW story was the result:

bloomberg.com/news/features/…

@BW

@BW This is Felicia Mycyk. She is a track and football coach. She's also a community activist who does all sorts of things from handing out laptops to kids who need them to running Zoom community discussions. She runs Ambridge Connection, which is like a community corner on Facebook,

@BW

@BW This is Rick Thornhill. He's the pastor at the New Hope Community Church. This summer he officiated at three funerals for men who died from overdoses. To him and his community that remains a bigger crisis than Covid-19.

Read 7 tweets

Shawn Donnan

@sdonnan

27 Jul 20

Spoke with my mother in Australia last night and it reinforced for me how the US has completely lost perspective on COVID-19 both in terms of scale of outbreak here and needed response.

Australia has seen daily cases spike to 450+ a day. No there aren’t zeros missing there...

Australia is a small country. But it has a population of 24m people. That’s more than Florida (20m), which is reporting roughly 10,00 cases a day.

My county in Maryland has a population of 1m. It has reported 17k cases and > 700 deaths. Australia has had 14k and 161 deaths.

How is Australia responding? Any intl travelers (including Australian citizens) have to spend 14 days in quarantine under guard at a government-designated hotel.

In response to the latest spike caused by an outbreak in Melbourne authorities have locked down the city again.

Read 11 tweets

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