To the Editor:
The USA has two problems. Actually more than two but I don’t have time to solve all of them today.
1) China has become a single source of failure to the global (especially the U.S.) supply chain. A single source of failure is a bad thing when failure would result in significant loss of life, capital or other important considerations. In short, too many businesses are now hostage to a government that does not have us (and others) in their best interest.
2) Central America is a mess. The governments are corrupt and/or incompetent. People are poor and have few prospects for what we would consider “the good life.” Many choose to endure a difficult and dangerous trip to the USA in hope of achieving something positive in their life. This is expensive for us in terms of money and political division. It also drains those places of the labor and brainpower needed by a functioning economy.
One solution to mitigate both problems. Government and industry should work together to move (much of) the supply chain to Central America. By this I mean governments here and the EU and Central America. This would shorten the supply chain. It would create some redundancy of supply. It would give the people of central America hope for prosperity. It would give China some competition, which might soften their relations with the rest of the world.
I have not seen any scheme that meaningfully tackles these issues. There are probably other ways to do this.
Feel free to elaborate on this or offer other approaches. The world really needs to do something.
