If, as former President Calvin Coolidge reputedly said, “the chief business of the American people is business,” the chief business of American lawmakers is to avoid hindering Americans at work.Oddly enough, Biden delivered this protectionist pandering to an audience of steelworkers, the very people whom his obstructionism threatens most.
Framed properly, the merger saga concerns basic economics. It involves a geriatric, technologically outmoded, and poorly managed American company, which, having failed utterly in its own right, is endeavoring to return its capital and workforce to productivity by relinquishing its assets to the highest bidder.
Moreover, Nippon owns shares in eight American manufacturers, and it and other Japanese-based firms employ more than 963,000 Americans. And these workers have profited. Dartmouth’s Matthew J. Slaughter reports that “Total annual compensation at averaged $86,859 per worker — about 22% above the average for the rest of the private sector.”
Displaced from their jobs, the erstwhile employees of shuttered firms must find new jobs — no matter what personal financial havoc they must endure in the interim. Some may choose instead to exit the workforce, preferring an early retirement or, for younger Americans, an extended — and often federally subsidized — hiatus from work.