Bob Dylan and Warren Buffett: Send our jobs to cheap-labor spots

Bob Dylan and Billionaire Warren Buffett (estimated worth, per Forbes, $146 billion), what do they have in common?

“They’re both rich and famous?”

Aside from that, and more importantly, how do they tie into the RGV?

Here, a lot of people in the world of ag commerce, customs brokers, cold-storage units, etc. are waiting to see if Mexican tomatoes are going to be hit with a 21-percent tariff July 14. According to a May 5 story published by “Food Manufacturing,” proponents of the tomato tariff say the import tax will help rebuild the shrinking U.S. tomato industry and ensure the produce eaten in the U.S. is also grown here. Mexico currently supplies around 70 percent of U.S. tomato market, up from 30 percent two decades ago, according to the Florida Tomato Exchange.

Tim Richards, a professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness at Arizona State University, expects U.S. retail prices for tomatoes to rise by around 10.5 percent if the 21-percent duty goes through. (Source: FM.)

The original border/tomato story dates back to 1996, two years after NAFTA went into effect. The U.S. Department of Commerce investigated allegations that Mexico was exporting tomatoes to the U.S. at artificially low prices, AKA, dumping.

According to the same story in “Food Manufacturing,” following that investigation, the U.S. government agreed to suspend the investigation if Mexico met certain rules, including selling its tomatoes at a minimum price. Since then, the agreement has been subject to periodic reviews, but the two sides always reached an agreement that avoided duties.

Until today. Now Trump says his administration is ditching the agreement and applying the Mexican tomato tariff in two months’ time.

Tariffs are either good or bad based on one’s situation, political party, or which media outlet has your attention.

The Gulf of Mexico (no, we’re not switching to Gulf of America) shrimpers, for example, were head over heels happy a month ago that a shrimp tariff went into effect because cheap imported shrimp were driving them out of business. (Wall Street Journal; 4/8/25.). These largely included the shrimpers tied to Texas’s docks.

Other businesses, that either import or export specific goods, not so much. For them, one has to feel sympathy.

Question is, could the U.S. have continued on its present course ($122.7 billion trade deficit) where even many of our pharmaceutics are now manufactured in other countries, primarily China and India. (Source: The NY Times.)

The main component of meds (active pharmaceutical ingredients) is produced in China, compared to any other country.

Almost all generic drugs are manufactured in either China or India. (Source: Morningstar.)

Point is, too much stuff consumed in the U.S. is now made outside this country. More importantly, perhaps, even before Trump’s tariffs, we considered China an enemy, and yet, we sent our manufacturing jobs there. China then took that trade surplus money and used it to increase the size and scope of its military.

You know, in case it ever went to war with the U.S.

Buffet/Schmuffet

This past Saturday, Billionaire Warren Buffett said during a shareholders’ meeting in Omaha that it’s a big mistake to slap punitive tariffs on the rest of the world.

“Trade should not be a weapon,” he said. (Source: CNBC.)

Trade and tariffs “can be an act of war,” he said.

Funny, but it’s guys like Warren who are largely responsible for sending so many U.S. jobs, U.S. manufacturing work offshore or south of the border.

Why?

Because profits are what he’s after, and if something can be produced in a cheaper-labor market, that’s where he would like the companies in which he has investments to relocate.

Globalization is King in Warren’s world.

What happens in the U.S., not his problem, unless it upsets the financial markets, which is what Trump’s tariffs are doing.

So anything Buffett says with regard to tariffs should be taken with the understanding that this guy definitely has a dog in the fight – keep the production offshored.

Why pay a U.S. worker in manufacturing even minimum wage when the average wage in China currently is $3 per hour. (Source: Statista.)

In India, it’s about the same, but without the communist party with which to contend -- $422 per month. (Source: Talent. com.) In terms of U.S. jobs lost over the past 30 years, U.S. manufacturing plants closed, estimates range from 60,000 to 70,000 factories shuttered, especially since China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. (Source: Economic Policy Institute.)

Meanwhile, most other countries around the world typically had this set-up with the U.S. – we will place a tax on the goods you import into our country, effectively locking you out of our market, but the U.S. will give us free access to American consumers.

And our besotted, benighted fools elected to D.C., elected to the Oval Office, since at least the early 1990s went along with this, which is why the head of most trade unions, most blue-collar workers looking for a decent manufacturing job, now support Trump and his tariffs, and it’s one reason why the U.S.. currently has a national debt of approximately $36 trillion.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are telling us we need to return to that world. The status quo.

Bob Dylan Was Right

What’s hard to believe is that this sell-out of American goods, the American worker goes back even further than most people probably know.

Bob Dylan, for example, wrote and published a song in 1964 – North Country Blues. It’s a depressing ballad, really, about northern Minnesota, where he was born and raised.

Even at the age of 23, Dylan could see what was happening to the American worker: In the middle of the song, four lyrics tell the tale:

Oh, the years passed again and the givin' was good
With the lunch bucket filled every season
What with three babies born, the work was cut down
To half a day's shift with no reason

Then, the shaft was soon shut and more work was cut
And the fire in the air, it felt frozen
'Til a man come to speak, and he said, 'In one week'
That number 11 was closing

They complained in the east, they are paying too high
They say that your ore ain't worth digging
That it's much cheaper down in the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothin'

So, the mining gates locked and the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
When the sad, silent song made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking

Yes indeed, the politicians in charge of this country for the past 60 or so years should be placed on a Hall of Shame.

Question now is, how to fix it with the least amount of pain to the rest of us?