Summary
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted on CBS’s Face the Nation that US workers won’t reclaim traditional manufacturing jobs under Trump’s tariff-heavy strategy.
While promising “trillions” in new investment, he confirmed that new factories would be automated. Lutnick touted support roles like mechanics and HVAC technicians instead.
Critics cite the tariff policy inconsistency and rising consumer costs.
Market reactions have been severe, with steep losses and fears of trade wars as China and others prepare retaliatory tariffs.
Ah yes. The one mechanic per hundred machines or whatever is totally the same as millions of factory jobs.
Why the hell do these people want to be enslaved in factories anyway?
We can have unskilled labor that doesn’t involve possibly being mangled by machinery.
The problem isn’t the jobs, it’s the lack of jobs and the wage rate not keeping pace with production capacity and inflation for the last 50 years.
Dumb Trump supporters want mindless factory jobs to return because they think it will bring back higher wages. Those high wages came from unions, not factories being uniquely high paying. Unions are the reason workers once had a fair standard of living and people need to remember their collective power.
There is a very specific type of American subset that is in love with that fantasy. Real, honest, hard, labor, subservient and reliable. It gives some people purpose, value, even hope. Even for those who did not experience it firsthand, there is a tangible sense of loss for that type of American experience.
Like religion, labor can function as meaning when life appears too complex for deeper understanding.
“enslaved in factories”
Factories and similar jobs are the first ones that got unionized and work conditions ended up being the best that someone could expect without higher educations. That’s what people lost with globalization and what they think they’ll get back, but without unions that won’t happen.