this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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50 years of manufacturing job loss can't be fixed in one presidential term. Nicocado didn't lose all that weight in one week. Change can be hard and painful. But not changing would be giving up on the next generation. He might be rude, he might be orange, but by god he is addressing the elephant in the room everyone else is ignoring.
He might be rude and orange... He might also have done all this with no plan, he might be driving up the cost of virtually everything, he might be driving many small businesses into bankruptcy, he might have created instability that's going to make everyone reluctant to start new businesses, he might have driven away all of America's trading partners, he might have handed the 21st century to China on a silver platter, he might have ended the dollar as the global reserve currency and all the perks that come with that... I could go on.
How much more damage will Republicans do to the US before enough people accept that, by and large, our manufacturing days are behind us? And that manufacturing leaving our shores is not the reason the working and middle classes are poorer than they used to be?
The tariffs were planned. Presidents generally roll out the 'eating your vegetables' policies in their second term. Of course its going to drive up prices, that is the point. The small business that start making domestic goods will make good money. The small businesses that just dropship crap from Temu and Alibaba will go out of business. The dollar was already disappearing as the global reserve currency before Trump.
We need to NOT accept that manufacturing is behind us. NEVER accept failure.
Would you like to work in a factory for peanuts making basic goods previously made in China?
Manufacturing never left America. Aerospace, military, energy, etc. are alive and healthy, creating highly specialized and valuable jobs.
Trump wants to bring back people working for minimum wage (or way less if using prisoner labor) doing menial toaster assembly.
To answer your question, yes I would. Working in a factory makes you much more than peanuts. You don't have to work in aerospace either. They are good jobs and creating more of them will benefit our country and raise average wages. A factory for making toasters opening up and creating jobs will increase average wages via supply and demand for labor. Even the bottom tier factories near me currently pay twice the minimum wage and that number will only go up with more job competition.
Did you know the Chinese government subsidizes shipping cost up until the point of entry at another country? It sometimes costs more for me to mail something to the next city over than it costs to mail something from China to the next city over. Our trade problems go beyond just cost of labor and shipping. China has had their thumb tipping the scale for a long time, now we do too.
How is manufacturing being behind us failure, exactly? Does an engineer fail when they pay to eat at a restaurant? The service industry jobs that make up 3/4 of our GDP pay better than manufacturing jobs. Tariffs are like adding a restaurant tax to incentivize lawyers and doctors and engineers to cook at home.
Transitioning from low paying physical work to high paying mental work is success, not failure.
You assume service industry means everyone is doing high paying mental work? Not everyone is capable of being a doctor or a lawyer. For most people working in the "service industry" they are providing services to the upper class. Maids, waiters, cleaners, cooks, delivery drivers. We don't pay teachers living wages. The country only needs so many accountants. Anything tech or customer service related that can be outsourced is sent to India.
Just like a stock portfolio, the economy is healthier if it is diversified. That means we need to bring back manufacturing. Maybe then, people besides just lawyers, doctors, and engineers will be able to afford to go to a restaurant.
There's no businesses, large or small, set up to take advantage of the tariffs in most industries. And it's difficult for new businesses to set up because there's an air of uncertainty to everything right now, because Trump likes to roll things out major changes with as little warning as he can - which is not an environment conducive to investment of any kind. Further, the equipment that would be needed to start a new manufacturing business is, by and large, covered by tariffs!
As for accepting failure - we didn't fail to keep those manufacturing jobs. We developed to the point nobody was willing to do those jobs for a cost effective price. That is not a failure.
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/ibm-pledge-billions-tariffs-us-manufacturing/746567/