Yesterday it was reported that the U.S. national debt for the first time exceeded $ 40 trillion. Much of the sharp rise attributed to the Covid pandemic beginning in 2020, and the license fgiven since that point for 7 trillion in annual spending ever since, under both Trump and Biden.
As I've said many times, not reigning in the debt is my one disappointment of Trump's presidency (so far). And at least Trump and treasury secretary Bessent are talking about the debt, and the need to reduce it. Both Bessent and Trump have talked about the need to "grow our way out" of debt, by growing the economy, and Bessent has said it visibly went down about 1% in fiscal 2025, and he anticipates the debt will continue to decline over the next few years.
I also ran across this Youtube documentary about the beginnings of offshoring of factories and jobs, and its origins, that is traced to a few specific data points. Plus links to many others I haven't watched yet.
I actually saw Ross Perot as the return to Reagan era fiscal conservatism, that Bush Sr had deviated from. Or at least the attempt to be that. And I think Perot could have won that election, if he hadn't gone on that weird tangent of Republican operatives planning to spoil his daughter's wedding, and dropped out of the 1992 presidential run. He later got back in, and still, even after that, got 19% of the vote. If he hadn't dropped out and shaken public confidence in him, his ratio of the vote would have been a lot higher. Clinton won that year with 43% so it was within reach.
This documentary shows that, in the narrator's words, while off on some details, Perot was more right about NAFTA than anyone else. And that it was a mixture of 1) corporate board members offshoring and manipulating their stock to maximize profits at workers' expense 2) automation further displacing workers, and 3) while initially a 'sucking sound going south" to Mexico, Mexicans ulimately lost heir jobs to even cheaper labor in China and Africa. So Mexicans initially got our jobs, but didn't get to keep them.
