On Wednesday, President Trump brought his message of economic revitalization to Lima, Ohio. With new jobs, the Joint System Manufacturing Center, better known as the Lima Army Tank Plant, served as the background of his speech. It might appear to be just the sort of economic success story that Trump made the central point of his presidential campaign.
Unfortunately, though, the plant is nothing of the sort.
Those jobs in Lima are not driven by a strong economy or by high-demand products rolling off an assembly line. Rather, they are the product of federal spending. The product, so eagerly championed by the stateâs lawmakers, is a refurbished version of a 40-year-old tank, so useless today that it is shipped directly to storage in the desert, where thousands of others are already stockpiled.
Uncle Sam might as well be paying people to dig ditches for a living. At least then, taxpayers could save on the shipping costs.
But Congress and two successive administrations wanted their tanks, or rather, they wanted to get credit for the Ohio jobs required to make them. And so, they have authorized billions for M-1 Abrams tanks, which for six years the Army brass have been trying to block, saying they donât need or want them.
In 2013, after Congress voted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the tanks, Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno told the Associated Press, âIf we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way.â
In 2018, the Army still didnât want the tanks. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress last April that more tanks are not needed. âThey are fundamentally at the end of their lifespan,” he said. He advocated instead for the modernization projects to be directed at newer equipment.
Itâs no secret that for the lawmakers, this program was never about national defense. It was and is about manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt. As Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, put it in 2014, this federal appropriation âkeeps the production lines open in Lima, Ohio, and ensures that our skilled, technical workers are protected.â
During his remarks, Trump all but acknowledged that the decision to invest in refurbishing tanks had little if anything to do with the needs of the military. He noted that it had come at the urging of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who represents Lima, and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. As Trump put it, they called him up and said, “You just can’t do this.” As he told the audience, “If it weren’t for me, this place would be closed.”
There’s a name for programs like this. They are called jobs programs. They used to be called pork projects. Either way, they represent a misallocation of scarce resources in the economy to meet political rather than market demands. And as such, they create economic inefficiencies and reduce the number of truly sustainable jobs nationwide. And as part of the nation’s defense strategy, they also create a dead loss, wasting money that could otherwise go toward actually defending the nation.
Meanwhile, it seems everyone can be happy with Pentagon waste so long as it ends up creating a job in some charming Rust Belt town in a swing state. This is no way to run the world’s greatest military.
