Sen. Ron Johnson backs outsourcing

Sen. Ron Johnson backs outsourcing, says it’s better to have products made ‘dirt cheap’ overseas. This article is behind a firewall at JSOnline, so I will reprint the things pertinent to Senator Johnson. But this isn’t the first or only time that he has stated this position and actually it aligns with many economists. The only really odd thing about it is it seems to go against the president’s platform.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson argued for shipping more manufacturing jobs overseas this week in a presentation to commercial real estate agents.

The Republican from Oshkosh described the ability to outsource manufacturing jobs as one of the benefits of the global economy.

“From my standpoint when we don’t have enough workers in this country right now, that’s a real limitation to our economic growth,” he said, according to a video of the event. “To me it makes no sense for American workers to produce high-labor-content products. Let the billions of people around the world do that and provide us these goods — high quality, dirt cheap.

“That to me is economically efficient. Unfortunately, we’re probably going to retrench from that, that type of policy, and I don’t see how it’s going to particularly work.”

Johnson, who made the comments Tuesday in an online conversation with the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin, also raised concern about the Federal Reserve’s policies, saying the country could lose the ability to control inflation.

“By the way, I should have warned you I’m not the most uplifting character to talk to,” Johnson told the group.

Johnson is the former head of the plastics company Pacur. He sold his share of the firm in March.

Coming from a former manufacturer, this isn’t a surprising statement and for once Sen. Johnson is being consistent in his position. But it is surprising given the senator’s support of the president and the president’s position on trade and bringing jobs back to America.

This won’t have any effect on the 2020 presidential elections but I wonder if it will come back to bite him if he decides to run for re-election in 2022?

btw: I was backgrounding (I may have made this word up) him and this is what is on Wikipedia today:

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