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Reading your great article makes me question why policymakers may have forgotten the benefits of international trade as we have learned in FIN class. It raised a question to me that “To what extent does a single country should be self-sustained or should it instead be focusing on one area that it is best at while relying on others to provide them with other goods?”. In my opinion, although demolishing NAFTA may seem to benefits, domestic manufacturers, but these companies now have fewer incentives to become more innovative and efficient. As a result, the end consumers are the one paying the price for this policy as the increased cost will be passed on.

Great article! This is one good example of a business that tries to focus on a double bottom line (one being the financial return and the other being the environmental return). I was impressed by Mar’s attempt to tackle this World-class issue of climate change but I do have real doubt that they would be able to effectively carry this out. Of course, Mar’s investors will not all get on board at this because, I believe, many of them are concerned about getting more money back to justify their investment. I was wondering how a company whose mission shifts to caring more about the world will be able to convince their investors to follow through with the same logics.

Thank you for the great read Sumit. I think you perfectly pointed out the benefits and costs of protectionism in an interesting way. Moreover, I was wondering whether or not the price of the imported solar panels is higher or lower than their domestic counterparts (not to mention their relative efficiencies in converting solar energy to power). And because of this policy, there presents a good opportunity for Sunrun to vertically integrate upstream. Perhaps, acquiring Solar panel manufacturer might be a good action plan for them as reshoring has been something that the President has been focusing on. I would love to hear what you think about this.

Great article. I do think that these companies are not paying the bill for the entire world. For example, the commodities trading firm I was working for did pass on the increased cost to refineries as we shifted from using FO to LSO to MGO. These refineries then pass on the cost to the end consumers. So, in the end, everyone is paying the bill for this. Moreover, these costs can also be subsidized by the government which raised fund from taxes. Therefore, if the market corrects itself and is efficient enough, everyone will take some parts in paying such bill to the World.

Thank you! This article is really in the area of my interest. Coming from a commodities trading background, I realized a large number of paper works that need to be done for a single trade transaction. The root cause of all this is due to the “Trust” issue among different parties participating in the trade chain. Therefore, I’m a strong believer that the ‘smart contract’ is the solution to all this reductant and time-consuming work. Your article has provided me with new perspectives, especially when you mentioned ‘software-as-a-service’ as one of the applications of the blockchain in solving this. I’m wondering how this would play out in this future.

Super interesting read!. It’s interesting and, at the same time, challenging to be thinking about the future of services such as Uber and Lyft, as we touched on a little bit in the TOM case. The article clearly indicated that Uber has taken a big move to respond to the AV trend (M&A, partnerships, development and so on). One question that came up in my mind is whether or not the AV will be self-owned and privately used or be it that people will not own vehicles anymore but rather reply more on autonomous transportation services. I believe the answer to this question will have a significant implication on the extent to which Uber and Lyft are being threatened by the advent of AVs.