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- The Dems Winning Message, China’s Export Colossus, & Data Center Abundance
The Dems Winning Message, China’s Export Colossus, & Data Center Abundance
What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening to
Alan Pentz
November 13, 2024
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If there’s one person who called the Democrats problems in the election, it’s Rudy Teixeira. He’s been steadily beating the drum for a more working class focused orientation for years on his Substack, The Liberal Patriot, and in numerous other writings and appearances. In this piece, Dustin "Dino" Guastella and Jared Abbott show that candidates who adopted a pro worker and anti-corporate message outperformed Harris:
The House candidates who outperformed Harris the most in competitive districts—such as Gabe Vasquez (NM-2), Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Matt Cartwright (PA-8), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-3)—employed some of the strongest economic populist language in the field, calling out economic elites and putting the working class in the center of their appeals. Vasquez, for instance, outperformed Harris by an average of 5 percentage points across the counties of New Mexico’s 2nd district. Here is a typical message from his campaign:
“New Mexico’s workers and small businesses are the backbone of our economy...For too long the nation’s largest corporations haven’t paid their fair share, while CEOs and wealthy investors inflate their salaries and dividends. They do this while refusing to increase pay or benefits for workers. We can’t afford to allow this to continue.”
This finding fits with my theme that the Democrats will come back in 2026 and 2028 with a more anti-corporate tax cut message.
The evidence of China’s increasing imbalance with the rest of the world is overwhelming. We always knew that China was an exporting powerhouse but it’s underreported how much China has ramped up its export market as it tries to deflate the housing bubble and has realized that Belt and Road is a loser.
To be fair, some of this surge is preparation for the imposition of tariffs but the larger trend is still concerning.
The US has 10x the number of data centers than any other country in the world.
Russel Clark is a former hedge fund manager and writes a great substack on investing and macro economics. His working theory is that the world is moving more and more into the digital realm. If AI is a key to the future economy, it needs data centers to enable it. I was shocked at the US lead here.
It does cut across my narrative about our deficit in manufacturing. Maybe we just allocated capital to a better and higher use? It’s possible but we still need to make physical stuff to ensure our security and prosperity. I’m not envisioning the US becoming China. We need to be more balanced. Maybe a few less data centers and a few more factories? I think that’s the road we are on.
Keep learning,
Alan
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