How powerful and positive is the government intervention?

The president-elect Trump threatens to impose any US firms that move their factories to foreign countries including GM and Ford has cancelled its previous plan based on this pressure. Trump's threaten will increase these firms' costs of production, at least their expected costs in the future. It is interesting that the president-elect provides a policy guidance that directs the market activities. The government could have the power to control companies' costs and operation strategies. However, firms usually need freedom to self-direct their businesses and as they have perfect information about their own businesses and are more likely to know the best strategies.

Based on such situations, governments may not have perfect information about companies and their goals are not to maximize the firms' profits. Once the governments and firms have different information and goals, they will have different interests and take different strategies. How positive is the government intervention in terms of its impact on the entire economy and society? Many government interventions ,especially those which seem to benefit the working classes and the disadvantaged groups, are likely to damage the firms' interests and even the firms' competitiveness. However, firms are part of the society and the economy, more importantly they are job creators and tax payers. Too much exploiting firms' interest is not socially desirable.

Trump wants to keep jobs in the US. It will reduce the US firms' competitiveness as their costs of production are generally lower elsewhere outside the US. Moreover, they may switch human labours with machine, in this case, the US employment rate will be improved by the policy. However, I think in general, there are more positive sides of his policy towards. Although human labours are replaced by machines, the US productivity can be improved by wider uses of machines and technology. Firms are forced to improve their other advantages other than cost of production advantages, this can push technology to develop further. But the most obvious problem is that the groups with knowledge and skills will take advantage of his policy while the disadvantaged group seems to be left behind under his policy.