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| By: Nick Howard | Date: April 2017 - Updated: May 11, 2018 | Contact the Author |
Part 1 | Part 2 |
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The Trump message to industry is quite clear. Cut out the red tape, impose tariffs on a variety of imported products, all to make America great again. U.S. printers can buy into that because if the plan actually works the result will be more printing being produced in America. The Mexican upheaval is really a US, Japanese and Korean manufacturers issue more than it is a Mexican one. Goods assembled or made in Mexico are made by non-Mexican corporations – with a majority being American. In the 1980 movie The Formula, a film about a secret synthetic fuel that would render oil obsolete, there is a scene between two oil company executives:
 The printing industry can benefit from Trump's hacking away at red tape and forcing more factories to open up in the USA. Tariffs alone, if implemented by Congress, could invigorate rustbelt towns all over the United States. But there will be losers, and countries like Canada will have to work hard to keep itself out of Trump’s cross-hairs. If Trump has his way of removing the so-called tax imposed on manufactured goods made and exported from America, this could cause severe indigestion for, among others, Canadian printers. Similar difficulties existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After all, today Canadians enjoy exemptions on exported items, so the likelihood of Trump agreeing on similar schemes is not a surety. Think cheese and milk, wood products and paper.
A bull in a china shop, Trump, while upending the way things have been, has the inalienable ability to draw us in like a moth to a lamp. As much as some absolutely despise him as a person and cannot identify with his moral failures, those same folks see the benefits of a non-bureaucrat who shatters all convention and looks to shake up business. I can also agree with a lot of what Trump says. That's the conundrum we find ourselves in. From West Virginia coal miners to printing industry owners. Yes, a morally bankrupt man but . . . . he sure does have some good ideas! America's small business owners will applaud him if he does make it easier for them to expand and run their businesses. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for one, has made it extremely difficult for web printers. The EPA imposes harsh rules for exhausting of airborne effluents, and in some states like California, the paperwork alone kills the majority of a dwindling industry. Trump keeps tweeting about de-regulation. Yippee! For the U.S. printing industry, they hope Trump will not do anything really stupid to upend the economy. These folks are willing to hold their noses, forgive his sins and pray that Trump stays on message. However, as we know, trade is a two-way street. Earlier duties slapped on aluminum and steel clearly show that Trump had a great sound bite, pumped up the working masses but also made errors in calculating the fallout. In the boardrooms of behemoth American corporations, the leadership may remember that line from the movie: "We are the Arabs" and make Trump a one-term President.  |
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