06.30.16
Small beer — no one will care
Today, the NY Times ran a gotcha piece: Donald Trump Has Long Benefited From Trade Practices He Now Scorns
The major problem with it is the piddly findings. Trump is a builder and and a tycoon whose fortune comes from high-end services to the wealthy, not manufacturing. Perhaps he pays poorly but he’s not an outsourcer on the scale of a General Electric or Apple. (Or Tesla. Special case, follow link at end.)
The Times dings Trump for his line of “suits, ties and cuff links.”
Meh. They do not look to be particularly successful in the mass market.
“Mr. Trump also invested in a line of crystal bearing his name to go with his Trump Home line,” continues the Times. “The collection was produced in Slovenia, the home of his wife, Melania.”
Here. “The items in this collection are no longer available,” it reads. Well, maybe they’re somewhere else.
The Times shows its strongest evidence in his hiring of groups of laborers from eastern European nations for construction and service, a practice that is now common in American business and which is generally, as shown by the San Jose Mercury News, in direct violation of US labor law. (See this series concerning Tesla and Elon Musk.)
Perhaps Donald Trump has already lost the election. But if he has not, this magnitude of sin, when stacked against the general anger and grievance aimed at US trade policy and corporations, just doesn’t matter.