Treece Blog: Restating the Union
Written by Dock David Treece | | letters@toledofreepress.comThe big event this week was President Obama’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24. While the speech has been broken down and examined endlessly — and since there have been few developments in global financial markets since last week — it seems both relevant and appropriate to weigh in on a few topics raised that night.
Among the most potentially impactive of the points raised was President Obama’s discussion of opening additional federal lands for extracting natural gas. While it’s difficult to argue that — if he follows through — this wouldn’t be positive for the economy, it seems less than likely.
Most notably, Obama’s position stands in stark contrast to his refusal to sign off on construction of the Keystone pipeline. Obama’s back-and-forth on energy policy has made him seem inconsistent — and disingenuous.
It’s doubtful that anyone but the President’s closest advisers have even a clue as to his real agenda for energy policy in this country. This serves as just one example why business has suffered in this country under Obama; the only thing worse than bad policy is uncertain policy.
Another big topic was outsourcing. We were somewhat pleasantly surprised that the president laid out a clear, concise and coherent plan for reversing the decades-old trend of American companies sending manufacturing operations overseas.
That’s not to say he wasn’t late to the party. Instead of causing a reversal of fortunes for the American manufacturing industry, it seems that Obama is trying his best to position himself to take credit for a trend that is already under way.
As I’ve written for more than a year, a number of companies have already begun moving manufacturing from overseas back to the United States. To the president’s credit, this trend should certainly accelerate if a tax credit is created to encourage the resourcing of manufacturing jobs to the U.S.
Longtime readers will know that one of the reasons I’ve cited for manufacturing jobs leaving the U.S. in the first place has been the trend of education in this country away from practical skills. Many of the jobs in highest demand — and biggest shortage — are in engineering fields. Instead, in this country has raised an entire generation of sociologists and liberal artists.
Most of the points made by Obama should be supportive of American manufacturing. I may not agree with the president’s proposed changes to tax policy — with the exception of the proposed credit for bringing manufacturing back to this country — but what we saw Jan. 24 was at the very least a president acknowledging the failure of many of his longstanding policies, and a big step in the right direction. At a minimum, these policy changes should tide us over until January 2013 and the inauguration of a new commander-in-chief.
Dock David Treece is a partner with Treece Investment Advisory Corp and is licensed with FINRA through Treece Financial Services Corp. The above information is the express opinion of Dock David Treece and should not be construed as investment advice or used without outside verification.
Tags: Barack Obama, Dock David Treece, Keystone pipeline, Treece Blog
