{"id":168323,"date":"2025-04-10T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=168323"},"modified":"2025-04-09T17:26:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T21:26:50","slug":"mixed-messages-from-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=168323","title":{"rendered":"Mixed messages from Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Seems like we are not getting consistency from our elected and appointed officials.<\/p>\n

Let’s go first to tariffs… the President has said they will return millions of jobs to our country, right? That companies are standing in line to build new factories\u00a0 for all intents?\u00a0 Welcome news, indeed. I’ve watched the steel industry shutter, the computer industry selling itself to Big China… okay, technically the contract manufacturers who actually MAKE your iPhones, desktops, notebooks, etc. – some of them are Taiwanese companies. But much of their production and most of their factories are where? You got it, manufacturing supercenters near Chengdu, Shenzhen, and many other cities you know. So the workers getting the benefits are Chinese. (And it’s a long way from slave labor in most cases – between cost of living,\u00a0 company paid dorms, eating halls, uniforms, etc. a low skilled line worker at the Foxconn factory made a better effective income than my daughter who was getting through college via WalMart.)<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s secretary of Commerce seemingly admitted on Sunday that US workers would not see long-lost manufacturing jobs return as a result of the president\u2019s new tariff strategy, which places duties on nearly all US imports.<\/p>\n

Howard Lutnick appeared on CBS\u2019s Face the Nation<\/em> on Sunday and promised that \u201ctrillions\u201d of dollars would flow into the US in the form of new investments in America\u2019s manufacturing sector. Margaret Brennan, the show\u2019s host, questioned whether those factories would be \u201cautomated\u201d, as Lutnick had said previously.<\/p>\n

Lutnick went on to portray the automization of iPhone assembly as one of the benefits of the president\u2019s plan, claiming that the \u201carmy\u201d of \u201cmillions\u201d currently employed in Apple\u2019s factories overseas would no longer be part of the process. America, he said, would see an explosion of mid-level trade employment opportunities including \u201cmechanics\u201d, \u201cHVAC technicians\u201d and more in support of this hypothetical surge in growth of US manufacturing.\u00a0 The Independent<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can see bringing jobs back to the US\u00a0 – I’m all over that and have actively participated in that process. But if you have a highly automated line, what you need is maintenance staff. And the more automated it is, the fewer of those maintenance positions you normally need. I’m not sure that millions of folks want to wait for the jobs, or become part of the maintenance team. Although it does sound like a good way for the factory owners to feel good.<\/p>\n

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And just one more item on Mr. Trump himself…remember how Biden was excoriated for checking his watch during the transfer in (called a “dignified transfer”) of military casualties?\u00a0 He at least was there.<\/p>\n

Presidents do not always attend dignified transfers, but are often present. The HuffPost<\/em> reported in September 2020 that of the 96 dignified transfers that took place from the start of Trump’s first term, Trump had only attended four.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About one a year. Must not have been many casualties 2017-2020.<\/p>\n

The bodies of the U.S. soldiers who died in Lithuania were recovered this week after authorities dug their armored vehicle out of a peat bog in Lithuania. The soldiers were identified as Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28; Jose Duenez Jr., 25; Edvin F. Franco, 25; and Dante D. Taitano, 21.<\/p>\n

The four soldiers, who were part of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, were on a tactical training exercise then they were reported missing on March 25. Their vehicle was found the following day submerged in water, and it took days to pull it out.<\/p>\n

Lithuania’s President Gitanas Naus?da attended a departure ceremony on Thursday to honor the soldiers, as hearses carried their bodies to Vilnius airport to be flown to the U.S. for burial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good on Mr. Nauseda.<\/p>\n

NBC News first reported that Trump would not be present for the transfer at Delaware’s Dover Air Force base on Friday because he is attending a dinner reception in Florida.<\/p>\n

The president departed the White House for his Doral resort in Florida on Thursday and dined with leaders of the LIV Golf tour later that evening. Newsweek<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Hegseth represented the administration. It’s not a press event, but like Mr. Lewis (yes, C.S.) said, “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.” A golf dinner seems like a poor excuse for not paying respects to the first military dead in his administration. Bad optics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seems like we are not getting consistency from our elected and appointed officials. Let’s go first … Mixed messages from Washington<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[387,74,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-affairs","category-the-warrior-code","category-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}