Subject: Re: I must need to drink more Kool-aid
Of course it is.

Okay. Nothing more for me to add then.
We have a fundamentally differing view on what the US economy should look like.

The stats say yes. Our industrial output is near an all-time high. We build more stuff than at any time in our history - just like we grow more stuff than at any point in our history, even though agriculture as a share of the U.S. economy has become incredibly tiny. No one's out there saying we're not a nation of growing stuff any more, simply because Ag is only 1% of our GDP, and the same is true of manufacturing.

This one I think is more a statement of global market share and of the supply chain in general, plus critical industries. "Manufacturing" is quite a broad term. Are we leading the world in shipbuilding, for example? (We're at 0.2% of the world's output). What about heavy construction equipment? That one's a bit better at ~22%. Semiconductors is 12%.

Port cranes are something that we don't make many of, either. That's a heavy industry that needs reviving. Were you aware that the Chinese supply 80% of the cranes at US ports?

So "the stats" require double-clicking.

If you ask me whether I'd rather be a global leader in software than making apparel, I'll choose the former over the latter every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Don't think anyone would make that trade. Companies like Anduril will help push that dominance forward. That said, there are a lot of towns that used to have sawmills and things that don't today.

Even if you stipulate that "something has to be done," what Trump is doing is phenomenally stupid - not just the way he is doing it, but what he is doing. Even if something has to be done, that doesn't make this good policy just because it is "something."

That depends on if you think the trajectory the US was on was a sustainable one or not. You evidently believe that we were on a fine path but even Joe Biden didn't think so - hence the CHIPS act.

You're going to rejoinder that "Biden's way was a far better way to encourage onshoring of critical manufacturing" and you'd be 100% right if the US was on more sound fiscal footing. But since we're not it's a bit more nuanced than that.