By Richard Manning

Last year was the best in generations for American workers, but what lies ahead? Can the Trump economy keep roaring through 2020?

The undeniable truth is that fewer Americans are unemployed today than at any time since 2000. The impact of America being at work is resulting in higher wages with low inflation, meaning real income has grown with low-wage workers benefiting the most.

One thing is equally clear – nothing stays the same. When there is a wind behind the sails of an economy, it has a certain amount of inertia, until it doesn’t.

Senate passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement seems likely considering the broad bipartisan support the deal obtained in the Senate Finance Committee. It will provide certainty for the flow of commerce between our three countries. While the trade focus is on China, 34 percent of U.S. exports last year went to Canada and Mexico. China only buys about 7 percent of our goods and services.

Automobile manufacturing in the United States should flourish under the deal. It imposes a higher threshold requiring auto parts and components be made in Canada, Mexico or the U.S. for vehicles to qualify for zero tariffs. A 2019 International Trade Commission report found 176,000 new jobs would be created by the deal, with 76,000 of those in the automotive sector.

With new wage requirements for Mexican auto production, it is more likely that double and triple shifts could become the norm at some of our nation’s auto-part production plants as automakers seek to meet new "country of origin" requirements. This should mean an increase in high-paying auto manufacturing jobs in 2020, along with other ancillary businesses that thrive when factories are buzzing.

The United States is also likely to see a new trade deal with the United Kingdom as they break away from the European Union on Jan. 31, 2020. The U.K. is our nation’s fourth-largest export partner, so a new deal with London is essential to keeping that relationship and the jobs it creates.

Thanks to our trade deals with China and Japan incorporating significant agricultural agreements to purchase everything from beef and rice to chicken, soybeans and corn, the only question will be whether our nation’s farms will be able to meet the foreign demand without it having too much of an impact on the cost of food at the American dinner table. But, once again, the good news is that those whose livelihoods depend upon agriculture production and exports should do well if our foreign trading partners keep their promises.

We can also anticipate that with illegal immigration stabilizing, or possibly even declining, it is unlikely that new immigration proposals will pass Congress. It is fair to assume that wages will continue to rise for American workers – particularly those in the bottom 40 percent of wage-earners, who will most likely face less much competition from illegal immigrants than in the past.

Some experts, such as Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm, are predicting oil prices will spike to $75 a barrel. However, the president's energy and regulatory policies have somewhat insulated U.S. consumers from massive price shocks due to domestic production. The world’s shipping industry is also being required to change the fuel their ships burn to a significantly more environment-friendly mix, which may have some impact on the prices of imported goods, but will disproportionately benefit U.S. oil refiners who have the capacity to make the new, required, fuel blend, while many other refiners around the world cannot.

One more major change we will begin to feel is high-speed internet (5G) spreading across America. More jobs will be automated. Ironically, the spread of more mechanized labor will likely accelerate due to the tight labor environment, which encourages businesses to innovate in order to expand. While it is unclear if this "future is now" trend will even be noticeable on the macro-economic scale in 2020, workplaces will undoubtedly begin to adapt to the new capacities of real-time machine-to-machine communication.

This innovation will create a need for a different bottom-up skills training system. This will likely be funded by tax credits to businesses to train employees for their needs, rather than the current system where the federal government attempts to pick labor's winners and losers by training people for jobs that may or may not exist by the time the training is actually completed.

With Congress relatively gridlocked, this kind of revamp will be unlikely until 2021 at the earliest, but the current hyper-partisanship combined with a presidential election is certain to prevent really bad ideas from winning legislative approval. This would be good news for the economy and the workforce as a whole.

Of course, dozens of unanticipated events will also take place in 2020, creating ups and downs that no forecast can hope to predict. However, the legislative and international trade events we know about are likely to benefit the U.S. economy. They will help to solidify employment gains made over the past nine years and help to maintain wage growth.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Video: Iranian terror general would still be dead even with Senate Dem resolution seeking to protect Iran

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1dqHjTT3EM

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from Fox News, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has motioned to withdraw his guilty plea, citing “bad faith” by the government in prosecuting him for process crimes arising from his ambush questioning by the FBI in Jan. 2017:

Michael Flynn moves to withdraw guilty plea, citing 'bad faith' by government

By Andrew O'Reilly

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn moved Tuesday to withdraw his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in the Russia probe, citing "bad faith" by the government.

The court filing came just days after the Justice Department reversed course to recommend up to six months of prison time in his case, alleging he was not fully cooperating or accepting responsibility for his actions.

But, in Tuesday’s court filing, his legal team said he moved to withdraw his plea "because of the government's bad faith, vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement."

"The prosecution has shown abject bad faith in pure retaliation against Mr. Flynn since he retained new counsel," Flynn’s attorneys wrote in the filing. "This can only be because with new, unconflicted counsel, Mr. Flynn refused to lie for the prosecution."

The filing continued:"Justice is not a game, and there should be no room for such gamesmanship in the Department of Justice."

In the court filing, Flynn's lawyers said the Justice Department is attempting to "rewrite history" by withdrawing its recommendation that he be sentenced to probation and by suggesting he had not been forthcoming or cooperative.

"Michael T. Flynn is innocent. Mr. Flynn has cooperated with the government in good faith for two years. He gave the prosecution his full cooperation," the attorneys added.

Could Trump be considering pardons for Stone and Flynn? Reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' all-star panel.

Flynn's case stemmed from a 2017 FBI interview, in which he was asked about his conversations with former Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to making false statements regarding those conversations during his interview, as part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 28 in a D.C. federal court by Judge Emmet Sullivan.

The judge last December rejected claims from Flynn's lawyers that he was pressured to plead guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with the Russian diplomat. His lawyers also had claimed the government withheld critical evidence that may have favored their client.

"It's been one atrocity after another," Sidney Powell, one of Flynn's lawyers, said on Fox News' "Hannity" Tuesday evening. "The recent sentencing note is full of lies."

Former Trump Deputy National Security Adviser KT McFarland says the government's investigative power was used for political purposes against her former boss Michael Flynn on 'America's Newsroom.'

The Justice Department wrote in its sentencing memorandum last week that Flynn's "conduct was more than just a series of lies; it was an abuse of trust."

The memorandum continued: "The government acknowledges that the defendant's history of military service, and his prior assistance to the government, though not substantial, may distinguish him from these other defendants. The government asks the court to consider all of these factors, and to impose an appropriate sentence."

 

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