By Robert Reich
To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvcI9vGH740
When Donald Trump spoke at Boeing’s factory in North Charleston,
South Carolina – unveiling Boeing’s new 787 “Dreamliner” – he congratulated
Boeing for building the plane “right here in the great state of South
Carolina.“
But that is pure fantasy.
Trump also used the occasion to tout his “America First” economics,
stating “our goal as a nation must be to rely less on imports and more on
products made here in the U.S.A.”
Trump seems utterly ignorant about global competition – and
about what’s really holding back American workers.
Start with Boeing’s Dreamliner itself. It’s not “made in the
U.S.A.” It is assembled in the USA.
Most of the parts and almost a third of the cost of the entire plane come from overseas.
Most of the parts and almost a third of the cost of the entire plane come from overseas.
For example:
The aircraft’s landing gears, doors, electrical power conversion
system - from France.
The main cabin lighting came from Germany.
The cargo access doors from Sweden.
The lavatories, flight deck interiors, and galleys from Japan.
Many of the engines from the U.K.
The moveable trailing edge of the wings from Canada.
Notably, the foreign companies that made these parts don’t pay
their workers low wages. In fact, when you add in the value of health and
pension benefits, most of these foreign workers get a better deal than do
Boeing’s workers.
These nations also provide most young people with excellent
educations and technical training, as well as universally-available health
care.
To pay for all this, these countries also impose higher tax
rates on their corporations and wealthy individuals than does the United
States. And their health, safety, environmental, and labor regulations are
stricter.
Not incidentally, they have stronger unions.
So why is so much of Boeing’s Dreamliner coming from these
high-wage, high-tax, high-cost places?
Because the parts made by workers in these countries are better,
last longer, and are more reliable than parts made anywhere else.
There’s a critical lesson here.
The way to make the American workforce more competitive isn’t to
build an economic wall around America.
It’s to invest more in the education and skills of Americans, in
on-the-job training, in a healthcare system that reaches more of us. And to
give workers a say in their companies through strong unions.
In other words, we get a first-class workforce by investing in
the productive capacities of Americans – and rewarding them with high
wages.
Economic nationalism is no substitute for building the
competitiveness of American workers.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
INEQUALITY FOR ALL.
