Comment of the Day

Comment of the Day: “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s about time recent EA comment auteur Holly A. was recognized with a Comment of the Day, and she actually had two strong candidates back-to-back. I chose the second. Both involved the same issue: garbage “climate change” advocacy and activism unhinged to actual facts. In the first comment, Holly impressively examined both the professors and the paper that sparked my post. I responded with gratitude, but noted that the technical details of the paper were not my concern. I wrote in part,

The ethics bottom line remains the same. There is not any “consensus.” The data is inconclusive. The hysteria is manipulated and politically motivated. Spending large amounts of treasure to alleviate a problem that is not well-understood is irresponsible. The news media has no interest in informing the public, and the people and politicians talking most loudly about climate change literally don’t know what they are talking about.

Fair?

Here  is Holly A.’s response, the Comment of the Day on the post, “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

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I would say mostly fair.

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Comment of the Day: “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck’”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

AM Golden invades the realm of Ethics Alarms long-form historical ethics commenter Steve-O-In NJ with an epic Comment of the Day, and a thing of beauty it is indeed. The post also brings back many memories I would rather have left buried. Here it is, in reaction to the essay, “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck'”:

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This is a 60-plus year process in the making. Barry Goldwater ran a fairly incompetent campaign but he absolutely had the news media biting at his heels the entire time. They gushed about Bobby Kennedy in ’68, they took potshots at Nixon. By the time Reagan came along, he faced hostility from a large segment of the press and Hollywood. In the meantime, Brain Trusters infiltrated the universities and encouraging the student protest movements instead of explaining how our Constitution was designed to work, culminating in a culture 50 years later that understands its country so poorly that it gets its news from Jon Stewart who is able to ignorantly proclaim that the Constitution doesn’t say that protests have to be peaceful.

In the election of 1992, Arsenio Hall ranted in his monologue when President George H.W. Bush said he probably wouldn’t appear on Hall’s show after Gov. Bill Clinton did, yelling about what made Bush think Hall wanted him on his show. Open hostility over who may or may not be a guest on Hall’s show paved the way for the venom spewed on every Late Night show today.

Believe all women? Not if they accused the first “black” President, Bill Clinton, of sexual harassment and even rape. “Anyone can drag $100 through a trailer park,” right? Bubba was caught with his pants down and allowed us to be caught with ours down on 9/11/2001 when he blew off an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, the culture wars were heating up and Americans were becoming concerned about the country’s direction.

George W. Bush – faced with a supremely hostile news media and entertainment industry – endured screeds about stolen elections, fake Presidencies and two mocking cable television shows (“That’s My Bush!” and “Lil Bush”) before he gained some respect after 9/11, but never really got the credibility he deserved. In pop culture, far too many Bush-deranged Harry Potter fans believed they saw the myopic Ministry of Magic’s denial that the evil Voldemort had returned in the efforts by the Bush administration to urge vigilance in watching out for terrorists. Ah, remember when J.K. Rowling was the voice of truth? The damage to the American public’s understanding of the Constitution, particularly the Judicial branch, continued apace

Bob Dole and John McCain were treated as racist, sexist old men who would put this country into a Nazi theocracy; Mitt Romney was framed as a racist, sexist and religious nut who would send this country into a weird Mormon Nazi theocracy. All three were all virtually Hitler.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was the be all and end all of existence. He who could do no wrong—and could not be touched because he had black skin and anyone who criticized him was a racist—took full advantage by damaging America on the world stage and inciting racial divisiveness on a scale that hadn’t been seen in 50 years.

When Donald Trump was campaigning in 2016, the news media covered him incessantly. It now appears that they wanted him to be the nominee because, in the words of Stephen Colbert on the day my family and I sat in his audience in NYC on a hot July day as he did a riff on how corrupt Hillary Clinton was, “Hillary so corrupt the only candidate she can beat is Donald Trump!”

It turned out she couldn’t even do that.

So the forces that had been coming together for 60 years—the biased news media, the leftist entertainment industry, progressive-dominated academia and other elite, corrupted professions coalesced into a single so-called Resistance Movement. Trump says people coming through our border with Mexico aren’t all angels, they accuse him of saying all immigrants are criminals. Trump says not everyone protesting in Charlottesville was a racist Nazi, he’s accused of “bothsidism” and pestered endlessly about condemning white supremacy even though he did condemn it. Trump is falsely accused of colluding with a foreign power, leading a big chunk of the population to believe his Presidency is the result of another stolen election.

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Steve-O-in NJ has some trenchant comments about what the Democrats are doing, or trying to do. Personally, I think the operative word here may be “denial.” Or cowardice. Or a political party that has become wedded to lies as its primary tactic whatever the issue, and can’t kick the habit even when it obviously isn’t working any more.

At the 1968 Masters Tournament, pro golfer Roberto De Vicenzo (above) signed an scorecard without checking it, thereby costing him a spot in an 18-hole playoff for the storied championship. He said, “Oh what a stupid I am!” and it stuck with me, as well as with many others, remembered as a poignant expression of regret and self-recrimination. I wasn’t in the ethics biz back then, but I admired the golfer for an honest, brutal assessment of his accountability. I am certain that he never again signed a scorecard without checking the strokes.

What the apparent plan of the Democrats in the wake of last November’s disaster—that is, the Harris-Walz ticket and their stunningly incompetent campaign—is to admit nothing, learn nothing, and to keep existing in as miasma of self-deception. Good luck with that. And I can’t wait to hear the argument asserting why anyone should ever trust a party that responds to failure like that to run anything, not just an economy, but a shoe-shine stand. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that about $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s absurdly delayed and overbudget high-speed rail project has been terminated.  This boondoggle was originally passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, a 800-mile rail line to be completed by 2020 in two phases on a $33 billion budget, connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles and branches stretching north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. In 2019, Newsom announced that there was no path to completing the original plan after costs ballooned, so the project was cut back to a 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield. Of course, the responsible course would have been to end the project entirely. High speed rail, however, as one wag wrote last week, is to transportation what wind farms are to energy: woke, virtue-signaling fantasies unmoored to reality.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”:

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Comment of the Day 2, “All That Jazz” Edition: “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I never know when a relatively obscure topic will strike a chord and produced a bumper crop of terrific comments. “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”turned out to be such a post. Here is the second standout response, a Comment of the Day by johnburger 2013 on the post, Does Jazz Really Need DEI?

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Here I thought Berklee College of Music was a serious institution. Silly me. Any institution with the following mission statement should be dismissed:

“The mission of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice is to support and sustain a cultural transformation in jazz, with the commitment to recruit, teach, mentor, and advocate for musicians seeking to study or perform jazz, with gender justice and racial justice as guiding principles.” (emphases added).

Just out of curiosity, what the hell does “gender justice” mean and what does it have to do with vamping in E flatMinor? Do we only study songs written by women? Do women prefer major modalities over augmented fifths? Do women avoid playing the F#maj13add4addflat7 chord?

Music is the one medium where gender and race are monumentally irrelevant. Is Within Temptation fantastic because the lead singer is a woman? No. The combo is great because their music is complex and full of surprises. The Warning (my most recent favorite band) isn’t great because it consists of three Mexican sisters. No. They are great because their music is intricate and heavy. The fact that they started out very young and have gained world-wide recognition as a family band is interesting but they are phenomenal musicians and songwriters. Kiki Wongo isn’t great because she is a woman, but because she has talent and tone, and can melt your heart or tear your face off with her guitar playing (Smashing Pumpkins realized her greatness when they selected her out of 10s of thousands of applicants for their lead guitarist on their latest tours). Linda Ronstadt wasn’t great because she is a woman; she was great because her voice compelled attention and takes you on all kinds of sonic adventures. [Editor’s note: Linda cannot sing any more because of Parkinson’s, but she was indeed great, and is still a great interview.)

As for “racial justice,” does that mean that only minorities are allowed to play jazz? Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane are not considered jazz geniuses because they were African American. No, they were great because they wrote and played the vocabulary for modern jazz. What about Buddy Rich? Was rich great because he was white? Hardly: he is great because he could play drums like nobody’s business and had a sublime sense of rhythm.

Comment of the Day 1, “All That Jazz” Edition: “Does Jazz Really Need DEI?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The recent essay about the efforts of an apparently bonkers music school to apply DEI policies to the jazz world was really a “Bias Makes You Stupid” post, and perhaps I should have framed it that way. After all, nobody, no institution, no profession, no workplace “needs” DEI discrimination. As my father would say, the nation and society need DEI “like a hole in the head.” In fact, DEI is a metaphorical hole in the head of the nation allowing core American principles to leak out.

I found Sarah B’s Comment of the Day, prompted by Chris Marschner’s comment regarding the correlation between jazz improvisation ans mathematics ability, both fascinating and, as usual with Sarah’s comments, illuminating. (I also found the context of her use of the phrase “toot my own horn” brilliant. )Here it is, in response to the post, Does Jazz Really Need DEI?:

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As a woman musician and mathematician (my husband would claim engineers aren’t mathematicians, but the lay person sees no difference), I think there is one aspect of Jazz that you are forgetting. I tried Jazz and not only do I hate the sounds of Jazz (I like Chopin, Beethoven, and Holst as my personal preference), but I also found the emphasis on improvisation impossible. I cannot improvise music, or anything really. I have no skill at making up music, though if you give me sheet music not horrendously above my level, I’ll play it for you, at least with adequate practice. I can sing nearly anything (in my range) that you can throw at me in at least seven different languages, and with a little time, I can do them from memory. I have a repertoire of several hundred songs that I can pick up and perform adequately on a given day without much more than a little warmup. I read soprano and bass clefs before I read English (my only language). I dabble in 7 instruments, with 2 of those mastered “enough”.

All of this is not to toot my own horn. I have much I could do to improve my music, but I have other priorities and I am happy at “good enough”. However, with all this musical study, I have found that while I can do a lot, I CANNOT improvise, nor can I make up my own lyrics. This means that Jazz musicianship is beyond my reach. It takes a different type of mind than mine to be a good Jazz musician, and not just someone who knows the math and the theory. There is another element besides musical and mathematical thinking, that of a certain type of creativity.

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Twin Comments of the Day: “Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook”…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Two longtime and esteemed commenters delivered worthy comments of the day on the same post almost back-to-back, and I’ve decided that they should be posted that way, since the second referred to the first. The original post concerned my response on Facebook to a particularly facile and lazy defense of DEI.

Heeeeeere’s Here’s Johnny and Chris Marschner in their tag team Comment of the Day on the post, “Popeye Time: I Am Finally Forced Into Responding To Woke Nonsense on Facebook“…

Well, one good point by [the banned commenter whose name must never be spoken, BCWNMNBS for short ]: Avoid a rush to judgment, as in “Now THIS is legitimate guilt by association”.

But [BCWNMNBS] is wrong about allowance of liberal comments here. I’ve made a few myself, sometimes sincere (I’m bi-polar when it comes to politics), sometimes playing the role of a progressive just to provoke an argument and force a stronger defense of a position. So far, I’m still here.

As to that Facebook post, the demand to be specific is rather ironic since neither DEI nor the component parts of that acronym have specific definitions.

Diversity — the high school where I taught in my second career had a welcoming sign in the lobby that said “Strengthened by Diversity.” My own thought on that was that we are strengthened by unity, but enriched by diversity. But, then, the enrichment can lead to strengthening. But, the enrichment and the strengthening come from voluntary association, not forced association which usually is counterproductive. What does the FB poster have in mind for diversity? Hmmm. Don’t know. No specifics.

Equity — for Progressives, this seems to mean equal outcomes, which is destructive of initiative, individual effort, perseverance, and so on. Or, does it mean ensuring a broadening of opportunities? Again, I don’t know what the FB poster has in mind.

Inclusion — Again, don’t know, but this sure sounds like something forced on people, which would be contrary to a basic right of freedom of association.

So, to the FB poster, from now on, be proud of your opinions, state specifically what you mean, don’t hide behind a simplistic slogan, let everyone know exactly what it is you are promoting.

And, to [BCWNMNBS], who may still be lurking, what you see as sealioning could actually be a variant of the Socratic method. Motive matters, and often enough, the motive of the one asking the questions is perceived differently by an observer, but, in either case, the effect should be to cause a refinement or adjustment of an initial position on an issue.

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Soon thereafter, Chris Marschiner contributed Part II:

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Comment of the Day: “…Unethical Quote of the Week: David Axelrod”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Prolific and historically literate EA commenter Steve-O-in NJ has been uncharacteristically scarce around these parts of late, but when he does weighed-in the quality of his commentary remains stellar. I’m going to have his Comment of the Day on the post “The Sequel to “Is It Ethical to Continue to Slam Former President Biden Now That It Has Been Revealed That He Has Metastatic Prostate Cancer?”— Unethical Quote of the Week: David Axelrod” kick off what bids fair to end up as “Why the Democratic Party Has Disqualified Itself From National Leadership” Monday.

Every single Democrat who runs for office should be confronted with the fact that their party spent four years defiling the Constitution and ignoring the will of their own voters. They should be asked, again and again, how do you dare associate yourself with a party that would do this? What’s your excuse? Why should any voter trust anyone who runs as a Democrat now? What does your party stand for, if it would exploit a man it chose to have the most challenging leadership responsibilities in the world knowing he wasn’t mentally able to do the job, as a means of letting backroom, unelected ideologues and partisan hacks secretly chart U.S. policy? Every Democrat office-holder or candidate should be forced to either condemn his or her party or beg for forgiveness and a second chance.

And the public’s response to their entreaties should be the same as mine: “Never!”

Here’s Steve-O…

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There’s no way I can be other than disgusted by this manipulative tactic by the same party who regularly bashed Reagan for being a senile old man while in office and came up with at least 20 ways to attack Trump as unfit. Reagan stumbled twice in eight years, once after being shot and having major surgery, again after seven years in office plus that and according to the left he was unfit the entire time, despite no one from the White House staff and no personal or government physician coming forward to verify any allegation of senility. No one unbiased has come forward to say Trump is unfit. His biased niece doesn’t count, and neither do disgruntled former employees. Former vice president Pence, former ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all have nothing to lose by spilling now, and every reason to do it after being publicly shut out of this administration, but none of them have.

Yet we all watched Biden deteriorate before our eyes, to the point where he could barely walk and couldn’t answer even softball questions, and the left tried to gaslight this nation by saying it was all Republican dirty tricks. This, the party of Dick Tuck, the original political dirty tricks man, whose members regularly insult the GOP as being a party made up of idiots and morons, had the audacity to accuse the same party of being masters of dirty tricks. This, the media who parlayed a single stumble, a golf swing, and a tennis serve gone wrong into a lasting image of Gerald Ford as an oaf and a klutz who couldn’t do anything right, had the audacity to bury multiple stumbles, an obvious old-guy shuffle, multiple obvious needs to be shown where to walk after initially going the wrong way, inability to answer easy questions, and a hundred other obvious signs of deterioration and THEN accuse those who pointed them out of trying to lie and deceive. If Biden hadn’t finally fallen apart in full view of the entire nation to the point where no farther denial was possible, these people would still be lying to us about Biden being sharp as a tack and having more energy than someone half his age.

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Comment of the Day: “BREAKING! Verizon Sucks!”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Much thanks is due to Ryan Harkins for helping to keep this from becoming “Jake Tapper is an Asshole” Tuesday with some thoughtful commentary about why customer service is almost universally terrible. This comes in the wake of my beginning a vendetta against Verizon, which damaged my business, lied, cost me money, wasted my time, raised my blood pressure, and made it all worse by generously offering me eight dollars and change for my trouble.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post “Breaking! Verizon Sucks!”

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My wife and I just encountered a situation with Spectrum, for internet services, and Ameritas, for life insurance. In each case, speaking with a different customer service representative ended up in wildly different stories and results, and in each case has left us angry and considering cancelling and seeking another company.

On the Ameritas front, my wife has a life insurance policy that was issued when she was a baby (I’m not permitted to say how many years ago, but she’s an early Millennial…), and we’ve been dutifully paying the annual premium for years for the $50k whole life policy. The problem is that since the policy is so old, the company apparently has no idea how to handle it anymore. It isn’t available to view through their website. Apparently it can’t be converted to a different policy that is able to be posted online. When discussing what to do moving forward, we’ve been told

  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date a few years from now
  • We’ve actually paid all the premiums, and now we have the policy in full, no further payments are needed until an unknown date far in the future
  • We haven’t paid all the premiums and need to pay late fees for not paying this last year’s premium
  • We don’t have to pay late fees, but we do need to pay the premium (that we’ve already paid)
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and are in danger of losing our policy altogether
  • We’ve not paid the premium that we have paid and our policy is changing into a different, inferior type of policy

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Comment of the Day: “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal.” There isn’t a thing I could say as an introduction that would improve on it….

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For most of history, the idea of modesty had nothing to do with the idea that the human body or sex was evil.  The idea was that the penis and vagina, as well as the female breasts (the focus of which is the feeding of babies) were indeed focused on reproduction, life giving, holy, and thus reserved from public consumption.  Avoiding public showmanship of the reserved and holy has been a common theme throughout most cultures, religions, and peoples throughout history.  We have a time, place, and occasion for every action in our lives.  Why do we not urinate/defecate in public?  I don’t want to see you do so, and frankly, nor do I want to see your sexual characteristics.

Though this is not a phrase thought well of on this site, we do need to think of children.  There is measurable harm that occurs to children who are exposed to the sexual before puberty.  Modesty, such as not going around bare breasted, is a protection for the children.  We don’t expose sexual characteristics to protect children’s innocence.  Sure, kids know they have these parts, but for the most part, what is not in sight is not emphasized.  We focus on teaching kids about their private parts and how to avoid excess attention focused on them for their safety.  We don’t want more teen pregnancies, child sexual abuse (which includes inappropriate exposure), or normalizing sexual attraction to minors, especially in the form of pederasty, which focuses on the fully developed sexual characteristics, like breasts, that the judges seem to be suggesting we should allow to be in full display. 

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Comment of the Day: “Important Note on the News Media’s War on President Trump”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yesterday was another Axis media freak-out day over Trump Administration II. The first hundred days were officially over, thus it was a fine time for the Trump Deranged pimping for a socialist future and trying to pretend that they hadn’t propped up a fake President for four looooong years to tell us the nation is doomed because this time we know who is President and he is orange Hitler-Satan. It was really quite a spectacle, almost screaming-at-the-sky-level nuts. I regret not posting Chris Marschner‘s excellent Comment of the Day on tariffs then for contrast. It’s clear that the vast, vast, vast number of your progressive friends and mine literally don’t know what the hell they are talking about regarding tariffs, and the news media most people are likely to read as well as broadcast news regard the topic as the equivalent of a public reading of Proust. So all the whiners in the echo chamber know is that tariffs are bad. Then again, today’s doomsday chorus is almost as vocal as yesterday. Let’s see…there are at least eleven “Trump is a monster and going to destroy us” headlines on the New York Times home page if you count cleverly deceptive ones like In an Uncertain Economy, McDonald’s Sees Spending Decline. (McDonald’s has been charging obscenely high prices for crummy food since Democrats inflicted higher minimum wages on their unskilled workforce and inflation spiked during Biden’s presidency, so the “spending decline” has nothing to do with Trump. I’ve declined to go to a nearby Mickey D’s when I want a quick semi-edible meal since in 2022…)

Here is Chris’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Important Note on the Newsmedia’s War on President Trump”:

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Americans in general have become spoiled. They do not seem to want to look beyond the immediate present to consider what is best for the nation in the long term.

[Commenter] Marrissa said “Everyone including people who love Trump want a good economy, low prices, and not have our important information leaked by someone who knows better.”

The question is at what cost? Low prices come at a cost to someone. Every dollar we give to China is one more they use to advance their Belt and Road strategy of global dominance. We fought a war here over the issue of slavery because it was at our doorstep but today we turn a blind eye to factory farms of China on which people are virtually imprisoned so we can get low prices on all sorts of products. I suppose it is not that we are against slavery we just don’t want to see it.

Just ten years ago the MXN Peso was worth about a dime and it is now worth less than a Nickel which means goods produced there cost half as much in terms of dollars. How is that possible if the US trade deficit with Mexico has exploded in that time frame? Demand for Mexican goods drive the value of a countries currency. The answer is foreign government manipulation.

What exactly does a good economy look like? Does it mean full employment even if that employment means part time work in multiple jobs or does it mean a balance between temporal value creation in service work and long term value creation in manufacturing. I say it means the latter even if it requires periodic realignments of resources between industrial production.

[Commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod] stated “People don’t like Trump because he seems almost actively hostile to the idea of demonstrating foresight and conscientiousness, even when it would work out better for his actual goals and his public image.”

How can EC say this? Is EC privy to the President’s deliberations? Trump had four years to develop a strategy and the say that he is hostile to demonstrating foresight and conscientiousness comes only from what he is able to glean from news reports. The exact same argument can be turned around on Trump’s critics because they are only looking toward the next election and not the impact on future generations.

EC questions the use of tariffs but there are few other tools in a presidential arsenal to limit the amount of American wealth being transferred to the CCP. How effective would moral suasion work on the American people with a fireside chat by Trump explaining the need to buy American products to protect our industries? It wouldn’t. Every country believes its consumers are an economic asset. Every dollar they spend on domestic goods and services directly benefits the domestic economy. Imports are treated as wealth leakages. We try to offset our wealth leakages with our exports that brings new wealth to our economy.

Much ink has been spilled condemning the tariffs but very little on some of the positive effects.

U.S.-based investments in President Trump’s second term:

Source: TRUMP EFFECT: A Running List of New U.S. Investment in President Trump’s Second Term – The White House

  • Project Stargate, led by Japan-based Softbank and U.S.-based OpenAI and Oracle, announced a $500 billion private investment in U.S.-based artificial intelligence infrastructure.
  • Apple announced a $500 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing and training.
  • NVIDIA, a global chipmaking giant, announced it will invest $500 billion in U.S.-based AI infrastructure over the next four years amid its pledge to manufacture AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S. for the first time.
  • IBM announced a $150 billion investment over the next five years in its U.S.-based growth and manufacturing operations.
  • Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced a $100 billion investment in U.S.-based chips manufacturing.
  • Johnson & Johnson announced a $55 billion investment over the next four years in manufacturing, research and development, and technology.
  • Roche, a Swiss drug and diagnostics company, announced a $50 billion investment in U.S.-based manufacturing and research and development, which is expected to create more than 1,000 full-time jobs and more than 12,000 jobs including construction.
  • Eli Lilly and Company announced a $27 billion investment to more than double its domestic manufacturing capacity.
  • United Arab Emirates-based ADQ and U.S.-based Energy Capital Partners announced a $25 billion investment in U.S. data centers and energy infrastructure.
  • Novartis, a Swiss drugmaker, announced a $23 billion investment to build or expand ten manufacturing facilities across the U.S., which will create 4,000 new jobs.
  • Hyundaiannounced a $21 billion U.S.-based investment — including $5.8 billion for a new steel plant in Louisiana, which will create nearly 1,500 jobs.
    • Hyundai also secured an equity investment and agreement from Posco Holdings, South Korea’s top steel maker.
  • United Arab Emirates-based DAMAC Properties announced a $20 billion investment in new U.S.-based data centers.
  • France-based CMA CGM, a global shipping giant, announced a $20 billion investment in U.S. shipping and logistics, creating 10,000 new jobs.
  • Merck announced it will invest $8 billion in the U.S. over the next several years after opening a new $1 billion North Carolina manufacturing facility.
  • Clarios announced a $6 billion plan to expand its domestic manufacturing operations.
  • Stellantis announced a $5 billion investment in its U.S. manufacturing network, including re-opening its Belvidere, Illinois, manufacturing plant.
  • Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in biotechnology, announced a $3 billion agreement with Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies to produce drugs at its North Carolina manufacturing facility.
  • NorthMark Strategies, a multi-strategy investment firm, announced a $2.8 billion investment to build a supercomputing facility in South Carolina.
  • Chobani, a Greek yogurt giant, announced a $1.2 billion investment to build its third U.S. dairy processing plant in New York, which is expected to create more than 1,000 new full-time jobs — adding to the company’s earlier announcement that it will invest $500 million to expand its Idaho manufacturing plant.
  • GE Aerospace announced a $1 billion investment in manufacturing across 16 states — creating 5,000 new jobs.
  • Amgen announced a $900 million investment in its Ohio-based manufacturing operation.
  • Schneider Electric announced it will invest $700 million over the next four years in U.S. energy infrastructure.
  • GE Vernova announced it will invest nearly $600 million in U.S. manufacturing over the next two years, which will create more than 1,500 new jobs.
  • Abbott Laboratories announced a $500 million investment in its Illinois and Texas facilities.
  • AIP Management, a European infrastructure investor, announced a $500 million investment to solar developer Silicon Ranch.
  • London-based Diageo announced a $415 million investment in a new Alabama manufacturing facility.
  • Dublin-based Eaton Corporation announced a $340 million investment in a new South Carolina-based manufacturing facility for its three-phase transformers.
  • Germany-based Siemens announced a $285 million investment in U.S. manufacturing and AI data centers, which will create more than 900 new skilled manufacturing jobs.
  • Clasen Quality Chocolate announced a $230 million investment to build a new production facility in Virginia, which will create 250 new jobs.
  • Fiserv, Inc., a financial technology provider, announced a $175 million investment to open a new strategic fintech hub in Kansas, which is expected to create 2,000 new high-paying jobs.
  • Paris Baguette announced a $160 million investment to construct a manufacturing plant in Texas.
  • TS Conductor announced a $134 million investment to build an advanced conductor manufacturing facility in South Carolina, which will create nearly 500 new jobs.
  • Switzerland-based ABB announced a $120 million investment to expand production of its low-voltage electrification products in Tennessee and Mississippi.
  • Saica Group, a Spain-based corrugated packaging maker, announced plans to build a $110 million new manufacturing facility in Anderson, Indiana.
  • Charms, LLC, a subsidiary of candymaker Tootsie Roll Industries, announced a $97.7 million investment to expand its production plant and distribution center in Tennessee.
  • Toyota Motor Corporation announced an $88 million investment to boost hybrid vehicle production at its West Virginia factory, securing employment for the 2,000 workers at the factory.
  • AeroVironment, a defense contractor, announced a $42.3 million investment to build a new manufacturing facility in Utah.
  • Paris-based Saint-Gobain announced a new $40 million NorPro manufacturing facility in Wheatfield, New York.
  • India-based Sygene International announced a $36.5 million acquisition of a Baltimore biologics manufacturing facility.
  • Asahi Group Holdings, one of the largest Japanese beverage makers, announced a $35 million investment to boost production at its Wisconsin plant.
  • Cyclic Materials, a Canadian advanced recycling company for rare earth elements, announced a $20 million investment in its first U.S.-based commercial facility, located in Mesa, Arizona.
  • Guardian Bikes announced a $19 million investment to build the first U.S.-based large-scale bicycle frame manufacturing operation in Indiana.
  • Amsterdam-based AMG Critical Minerals announced a $15 million investment to build a chrome manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania.
  • NOVONIX Limited, an Australia-based battery technology company, announced a $4.6 million investment to build a synthetic graphite manufacturing facility in Tennessee.
  • LGM Pharma announced a $6 million investment to expand its manufacturing facility in Rosenberg, Texas.
  • ViDARR Inc., a defense optical equipment manufacturer, announced a $2.69 million investment to open a new facility in Virginia.

That doesn’t even include the U.S. investments pledged by foreign countries:

  • United Arab Emirates announced a $1.4 trillion investment in the U.S. over the next decade.
  • Saudi Arabia announced it intends to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.
  • Japan announced a $1 trillion investment in the U.S.
  • Taiwan announced a pledge to boost its U.S.-based investment.

I don’t recall the media making much about this at all.

I challenge those who believe that Trump is leading us down a road to ruin with tariffs to put forth an alternative. If we would have recommended that all goods imported into the United States meet our stricter environmental and workplace safety standards in lieu of tariffs it would mean that virtually no Chinese goods could enter our consumption stream. Electric vehicles would become impossible to produce because the costs of extracting the raw materials would be prohibitively expensive without the child labor employed. Global workers would have to be paid in accordance to our minimum wage laws. We can’t have that either because we all want more stuff at the lowest possible price. Our grandkids be damned. Let them pay the bill.