Reagan’s “Morning in America trickle down economy,” Profits into stock options to CEOs, cut line workers & salaries. Outsource production to China. It works for consumer electronic widgets to Walmart. Not when preparing for war with China.

 My Uncle Lou a sergeant in Patton’s Army said the Germans had better tanks but for every Sherman tank they destroyed 10 would replace them. Back when President Roosevelt controlled production. Reagan changed that. 

Also not mentioned in the New York Times article below, our national shipping infrastructure might not be up to the task of effectively shipping defense related products.

"The Pentagon last year also created a team assigned to work with contractors to identify labor and supply chain shortages — and then gave out more than $2 billion in funding to quickly help resolve them.

That team started with a focus on resupplying weapons sent to Ukraine, Mr. LaPlante said, but it has now been set up as a more permanent unit inside the Pentagon to help the Defense Department make an “overall shift away from the just-in-time mind-set.”

In a reversal of post-Cold War policy, antitrust regulators have also increased scrutiny of continued military industry consolidation, with the Federal Trade Commission for example moving last year to block a $4.4 billion plan by Lockheed Martin to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne.

“We cannot afford to allow further concentration in markets critical to our national security and defense,” Holly Vedova, the director of the trade commission’s Bureau of Competition, said early last year, after the agency sued to block the deal."

MORE AT:

New York Times

From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine

The flow of arms to Ukraine has exposed a worrisome lack of production capacity in the United States that has its roots in the end of the Cold War.

By Eric Lipton

March 24, 2023 Updated 9:45 a.m. ET

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Railroads were functional when Roosevelt was president. Now unmaintained rails open wide & leave trains stuck on railroad ties. There’s not enough railroad workers to inspect rolling stock, brakes fail, trains crash & CEOs buy back stock options. 

OXFAM

Why are so many things running off the rails? Corporate greed.

Mary Babic March 16, 2023

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The Interstate Highway System designed in part by President Eisenhower to quickly move weapons is falling apart from lack of maintenance. Shipping defense materials over Interstate bridges ready to collapse is also a problem.

“Many bridges were built after World War II and meant to last 100 years. But they're falling apart ahead of schedule, due to combinations of extreme weather, the enormous growth of vehicle traffic, deferred maintenance and a lack of coordinated oversight.”

MORE AT:

AXIOS

America's bridges are falling apart faster than expected

Jennifer A. Kingson

Updated Feb 5, 2022 - Economy & Business

Meanwhile China has up to date well maintained highways spanning the Eurasian Continent. China’s rail system is well maintained & state of the art.

"Introduction

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived. Launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the vast collection of development and investment initiatives was originally devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure. In the decade since, the project has expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, significantly broadening China’s economic and political influence.

Some analysts see the project as an unsettling extension of China’s rising power, and as the costs of many of the projects have skyrocketed, opposition has grown in some countries. Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion. President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessors’ skeptical stance towards Beijing’s actions, but Washington has struggled to offer participating governments a more appealing economic vision.

What are China’s plans for its New Silk Road?

President Xi announced the initiative during official visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia in 2013. The plan was two-pronged: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road. The two were collectively referred to first as the One Belt, One Road initiative but eventually became the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward—through the mountainous former Soviet republics—and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia. Such a network would expand the international use of Chinese currency, the renminbi, and “break the bottleneck in Asian connectivity,” according to Xi. (In 2018, the Asian Development Bank estimated that the continent faces a yearly infrastructure financing shortfall of over $900 billion.) In addition to physical infrastructure, China has funded hundreds of special economic zones, or industrial areas designed to create jobs, and encouraged countries to embrace its tech offerings, such as the 5G network powered by telecommunications giant Huawei.

Xi subsequently announced plans for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road at the 2013 summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia. To accommodate expanding maritime trade traffic, China would invest in port development along the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia all the way to East Africa and parts of Europe.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, 147 countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so.

MORE AT:

Council on Foreign Relations

China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative

WRITTEN BY

James McBride, Noah Berman, and Andrew Chatzky

UPDATED

Last updated February 2, 2023 4:30 pm (EST)

"China’s colossal infrastructure investments may usher in a new era of trade and growth for economies in Asia and beyond. But skeptics worry that China is laying a debt trap for borrowing governments."