(10-21-2021 07:03 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  I’ve heard a few talking heads say the same thing regarding onshoring manufacturing as a way to protect against this kind of issue at the ports in the future.
What specific tax and regulatory proposals from Biden/Dems make you think that onshoring would stack the deck even more? Corporate tax hikes?
A podcast I listened to yesterday was talking about this and went into the fact that onshoring would likely also increase the amount of automation in this country, and that some thought leaders (notably Bill Gates) recommend finding ways to address that, given that there are basically tax incentives to buy a robot as opposed to pay a worker.

Corporate tax hikes would clearly be one. The others depend on how far democrats try to go. Individual tax hikes would deter individual investment in companies to fund new or upgraded facilities. The Warren corporate governance proposals, if they got that far, would have a chilling effect on formation of new companies in the USA.

The amount of automation is going to increase whether onshore or offshore. All we can do is try to make as much of it happen onshore to limit the negative impact on jobs and supply chains here. And the impact of automation does not have to be all negative. We will create new, and generally higher-paying, jobs to make and maintain those robots, and the income form those will in turn create more jobs in service industries.

I need to run for now, will revisit this later.