Category Archives: Business

Jack Ma Of Alibaba Way More Believable Than Mass Media

Business, Donald Trump, Ethics, Media

From the vantage point of the malfunctioning media, when it comes to President-elect Donald Trump, all news is bad news. Warn the warped minds of mass media: “Alibaba’s promise to Trump of 1 million jobs” is not to be believed.

Well of course.

Don’t be fooled by the latest billionaire meeting at Trump Tower claiming to have made “great” progress in American job creation: Alibaba won’t create 1 million jobs in the U.S. as promised, at least not directly. On Monday, Alibaba BABA, +0.88% Chief Executive Jack Ma became the latest CEO to tout job creation after a 40-minute meeting with Trump in the newly-minted politician’s gold-plated tower. There’s no better music to President-elect Donald Trump’s ears than pledges from CEOs to keep jobs in the U.S. or to create new ones. Trump ran much of his campaign on ensuring U.S. jobs are kept away from foreigners and aren’t outsourced to other countries, and he’s gone through great, highly-publicized lengths to prove his election is the reason why jobs are coming to or staying in America.

However, Ma’s assertion that he’s going to create a million new jobs in the U.S. by helping small businesses sell products and services to China is a stretch. The Chinese e-commerce giant is merely upping its own investments to appeal to U.S. small businesses, providing them with incentives, such as user data and logistics capabilities, in hopes that more American brands will sell items on its e-commerce sites. The increased demand on those U.S. goods from the Chinese middle class will prompt, it hopes, increased hiring as U.S. brands expand to meet the heightened demand. …

MORE.

One thing’s for sure: Jack Ma of Alibaba is more believable and credible than American media. Just about anyone is.

Trump Changing Corporate Culture; Media Start Loving On Free-Market Capitalism

Business, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Free Markets, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Trade

The exuberant, America-First patriotism of President-elect Donald Trump is likely causing a chain reaction of sorts. Despite the gush and tosh from the deranged media, Trump has done nothing to pressure corporations to remain in the US—nothing but reiterate his campaign promises. But a powerful persona’s mindset is infectious, especially when coupled with the promise of a better economic climate. Trump is changing corporate hearts and minds about investing in America and its people. In order to frame this good thing as bad, the media have suddenly discovered a love of free-market capitalism. By triggering a change in corporate culture; Trump has the media louts decrying his assault on capitalism and his fostering of crony capitalism.

LOL: Free-market capitalism has been an “unknown ideal” in the US for a long time.

Via CNN:

Ford is canceling plans to build a new plant in Mexico. It will invest $700 million in Michigan instead, creating 700 new U.S. jobs.

Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment being created by Donald Trump. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with the president-elect.

“We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Fields told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Powered by SmartAsset.com

The $700 million investment will go to the Flat Rock, Michigan plant to produce more electric and self-driving cars. Ford believes electrified vehicles will outsell gas-powered vehicles within the next 15 years.

Ford is planning to roll out seven new electric vehicles in the next five years, including a Mustang Hybrid.

This is a major U-turn for Ford. Trump repeatedly slammed Ford on the campaign trail for shipping U.S. jobs to Mexico (a claim the company said was wrong). The president-elect has kept up the pressure. Just hours before the Ford announcement, Trump criticized GM (GM) for producing cars in Mexico. All of the big car manufacturers currently have some production in Mexico. …

… MORE.

UPDATED (12/1): President Elect Trump Changing The Tone of the Presidency

Business, Donald Trump, Labor

The question’s so improbable, you’ve probably never asked it of yourself: Has an American president ever directly affected your life for the better? Not mine. Donald Trump, however, has already delivered on his promise to directly champion the cause of flesh-and-blood, working Americans.

When the New York Times doesn’t trash Trump for the Carrier feat, you know it’s BIG:

From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump. … On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice president-elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory to announce a deal with the company to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.

Carrier worker Robin Maynard expressed joy and gratitude on the Castro News Network. CNN, however, managed to spin the Carrier deal Trump has struck before inauguration as … a possible negative. (At what price, etc.)

I hated both George Bush and Barack Obama. Other than to read prepackaged speeches and make the right sounds at crucial times in their presidency (in Obama’s case mostly when the victim was black)–they did nothing to directly help suffering Americans. If anything, the opposite is true. They’d arrive on stage, read a pre-prepared speeche, maybe authorize appropriations via a bureaucracy, and go back to their privilege.

Trump has not granted a handout; he’s helped people keep their livelihood.

Well done, President Elect Trump.

UPDATE (12/1): Some idiots like Bernie Sanders don’t get it.

The New York Slimes Dismisses Trump’s Role In Ford’s Decision To Stay

Business, Donald Trump, Economy

The New York Slimes is dismissing Donald Trump’s role in Ford’s decision to “keep an automaking plant in Kentucky.” It’s par for the course.

Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after 9 p.m. that Ford’s chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., had just told him that Ford “will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky — no Mexico.”
Minutes later, Mr. Trump wrote in a second post: “I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!” Mr. Trump won 62.5 percent of the state’s popular vote in the presidential election.
During the campaign, he repeatedly criticized Ford for moving production to Mexico, and he threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff on vehicles made there.

At play, I suspect, is the phenomenon I described in “Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Saying, ‘Si Se Puede’”:

“… a show of unparalleled strength and patriotism—Mr. Trump’s—extinguished a bad habit [Ford’s]. The biblical proverb (generously paraphrased) worked: Act like a fearless lion before an adversary, and the adversary will retreat.”

The force of Trump, as I ventured in The Trump Revolution, is changing reality on the ground.