Heck I’d take a 90s CRV interior over a lot of modern stuff, much nicer plastics and especially interior cloth.

as to “getting” Subarus, try bombing down a gravel road in one, all of a sudden that suspension that seems tippy and soft on paved roads makes a ton of sense.  That’s the differentiator between Subaru and…

I thought part of the reason for under-inflation was also for improved ride comfort. That leaf-sprung Ranger platform was quite “trucky,” although the switch to SLA from the old twin-traction beam was a massive improvement for the front end. But yeah, Firestone catching blame for tire “defects” was bogus IMO. Ford…

“How on Earth do you figure that? Trump has intervened in Syria, and the Syrian situation is orders of magnitude worse than Libya.”

Trump was goaded into attacking Syria by some very powerful internal lobbying from some of his neo-con administraton (Nikki Haley comes to mind in particular), but the most disturbing part…

Yeah, she’s a pretty ruthless and horrible person, and the thought of her becoming president and the sorts of global conflict that would follow scared this immigrant and his entire family into voting (R) for the first time ever. Cackling about Gaddafi was particularly disturbing.

I literally pointed to 845,000 jobs lost with TAA benefits applied, how much more direct of a correlation can you ask for?  In the last year my city has lost Carrier and Rexnord union jobs, before that there were plenty of others (Thomson/RCA moving to Mexico and gutting the East side neighborhood it was in)

Fair enough, and I appreciate the thorough responses.  I’d still say the US participating in the toppling of yet another Middle Eastern country with the inevitable anarchy that ensues (to this day, see slave trading) does us no favors, and I hold the likes of Hillary Clinton’s State Dept squarely responsible for the…

The number of confirmed job losses as measured by the American workers that applied for “Trade Adjustment Assistance” stands at about 845,000 as of 2014. I’m sure a bit more digging online can uncover a figure that looks at factories specifically. And I guarantee you that most of the people that lost jobs as a result…

I concede the point about automation being a large part of driving consolidation in numbers of factories.

You can’t address the issue of China’s massive unfair state-created advantage in global steel trade, because you can’t. You can’t stand the thought of this current administration taking on a tough issue and trying…

I know enough about what went where locally to see that outsourcing more-so than automation has negatively affected manufacturing. Why does Ford make the Mustang’s transmission in China? GM makes their cash-cow crew cab half-tons in Mexico, chock full of Chinese parts (lowest domestic parts content of any half ton).…

I work in automation, and I live in the heart of the industrial Midwest, alongside guys who spent their careers in the automotive space. If we simply automated most factories, the physical buildings would be there, humming along (perhaps some consolidation would occur to gain scale), and we would have fewer humans…

How about addressing any of my actual stated issues with the piece, oh enlightened one?  Cat got your tongue?

How does it have nothing to do with it? They’re getting exactly at the heart of the issue. It’s not free trade when one side insures that they always have a currency advantage, when their production is subsidized by the government, and in the case of steel, it gets to the point of massive global overproduction that…

Where did I mis-represent a fact? We’ve lost on the order of 50,000-100,000 factories since NAFTA, I’m close enough geographically and in terms of occupation to know spurred those closures and relocations. Heck they’re still happening. Just the scale of the wholesale loss of circuit board printing domestically is a…

A piece written by a “free” trader lobbying group/think tank, nice.

The arguments in these pieces (this one included) always boil down to a rather basic and misplaced analogy of “well, I run a trade deficit with the grocery store!”  I’m surprised an actual professor of economics would resort to that, it’s just plain…

You’ll have to explain to ignorant me how letting other countries prop up their industrial output and manipulate their currencies for perpetual export advantage and dumping steel and finished/machined goods on our shores is a good thing.

NAFTA was supposed to bring jobs and prosperity to Mexico to the point that they’d…

We and a few other NATO members (mostly France and the UK) had a VERY direct impact on turning the civil unrest in Libya hot, much like we did in Syria. Much like we did in Ukraine. Support the opposition strongly (with money and material means as well as political support) and when they gain enough momentum, start an…

Yeah, running everyday commuters and work vehicles. Old Saturns, Grand ams, cavaliers, S10s and Rangers, half tons, astros, caravans, buicks, old Accords and Camries, etc.

Donald Blumpf is a bad orange cheeto man!

Yeah! Stupid Blumpf! Ha!

Hillary wanted to set up a no fly zone over Syria (you need to sit and think about how insane that is), apparently turning Libya from the most prosperous most educated African nation into a failed state with slave trading wasn’t satisfactory enough.

The policy on correcting massive trade imbalances that have gutted our inner cities and small towns, that have been conveniently ignored by Republicans and Democrats hand-in-hand for decades?  That policy?  It’s a pretty good one.  Not eloquently presented perhaps by a less than perfect messenger, but it’s way overdue.