If new, state of the art manufacturing plants are essentially run with robotics anyway, would there actually be any net new American assembly line jobs anyway?
Apparently no one saw the 2019 documentary “American Factory” (Netflix), which ended with Chinese manufacturers offshoring from China to lower labor cost countries and substituting automation for Chinese laborers. What goes around comes around. Chinese laborers are facing the same problems Americans did 40+ years ago, and Europeans did 90+ years ago. (People forget the US undercut Europe, which was the innovation center during the Industrial Revolution, like Asia did with the US in the last 60 years).
And Trump's favorite President McKinley 'who made us the richest of all time' with his tariffs, presided over a United States in the same position of China of 40 years ago: a country just starting it's industrialization fuelled by cheap disposable labor
And creating previously unthinkable friends groups, like the China-Japan-South Korea trade movement announced a couple of days ago. Those three countries have been sniping at each other since the end of WWII, but Trump has managed to get them to sublimate their grievances and work together. So much American winning!
We're hanging out with the mean girl who insults and bullies everyone. No wonder they're making new friend groups. Soon the only ones who will talk to us are Russia, Hungary, North Korea and Israel.
What you're referring to is foreign exchange, AKA FX in the industry.
What you describe would be 100% true if we were still stuck with the gold standard, which, thankfully, we're not.
Currency reserves are stored as "accounts" rather than physical currency, so the actual impact would be fairly minimal. It would really depend on the currency value vis a vis other currencies rather than whether or not a currency is the reserve standard or not.
So, worry not. We'll still be fine - as long as the value of the dollar doesn't crash, which unfortunately, with this administration, is far from certain.
Um...no. Former Chief Operating Officer here of a company that made 20 million parts a day in 45 plants around the world. While there is a lot more automation in factories these days, you will never eliminate people on the shop floor. The most productive plants are those that integrate the work of the machines and the people in a way that takes advantage of what each does best. It is called "autonomation".
Productivity does eliminate people's jobs, but you will never eliminate them all.
I'm objecting to the poster's premise that, "...new, state of the art manufacturing plants are essentially run with robotics anyway,...". They are not. The reasons are both financial and practical.
Robotics and automation are a fixed cost, your return on investment is dependent on whether you can predict the demand nearly perfectly. If you over estimate the demand, you will either overproduce and have a lot of inventory, or you will underutilize your equipment and have an investment loss. This is, of course, a timing issue (i.e. can you build inventory long enough until demand catches up or gets higher and can you endure the cash flow issues).
Shop floor workers are a variable cost. They can either be reassigned or laid off when demand fluctuates. Balancing fixed and variable costs against demand and price is the key to success in manufacturing.
The practical issue is that, some automation (hard, dedicated automation) cannot be easily repurposed to make other products when customer tastes change. People are very flexible and can be easily repurposed. Robots, of course, can be reprogrammed, but that takes time and effort and still may result in stranded, underutilized capital. Lastly, your shop floor people are your best source for improvement ideas. Robots are unlikely to make many suggestions for improvement.
If all manufacturing could be profitably and practically automated, it would be, and there would be no shop floor workers anywhere, but it can't, so there are shop floor workers. Just ask Elon Musk, who tried to fully automate his first Telsa assembly factory and failed miserably. Manufacturing needs people.
There's not just one, simple answer. You need to match the people tasks and the automation tasks to the product current and anticipated future needs.
The OP wasn’t stating manufacturing workers will go away IMO, so I don’t think he/she would actually disagree with you. You both agree that adding new manufacturing capacity wouldn’t generate big job gains.
Followup: would it be fair to say that a shop floor worker in a modern factory is highly skilled and educated vs, say 50 years ago, and far fewer? If so, it is not going to help many and only those either with skills education or be trainable.
Shop floor workers have always been highly skilled. In our factories, even when we had little automation, the workers needed to be highly skilled in the sense that if something changed in the process (material variation, machine problem or variation) they needed to know how to spot it and fix it. Better yet, they needed to know how to keep the process stable and avoid changes or issues.
We made a lot of rubber parts which is a little like baking. The shop floor workers lived with the machines and processes for 8 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. After awhile, the people got to know their machines and knew, almost instinctively, how to keep things stable. If we ever wanted to improve a process, we always included the people on the floor because they knew many things that were either not measured or were unmeasurable.
These things are especially true if you are making a high mix of product, which means your need a flexible manufacturing process. People are very flexible and hard automation is not. Robots are more flexible, but need to be programmed and reprogrammed. AI might help with the reprograming if it leads to robots understanding verbal instructions...but you'll still need people to do it and watch the shop floor.
Yes, you will likely need far fewer workers, but that is a trend that has been going on for years and it is a good trend. Why have people doing a job that a machine can do when we need people to solve many other problems? The human capital needs to be reallocated over time and it has been as you can see by the fact that we have less people producing the same manufacturing output (productivity) and unemployment is very low.
Your insight suggests that the scope for addressing jobs for many US citizens improving their employment situation via re-homing manufacturing is unlikely. The current and future roles of humans in manufacturing are very different from those in 1960.
Those without the skills or education or struggle to acquire those skills will remain on the sidelines.
One advantage of automation is that it can use much less skilled people on the factory floor, which means lower wages (for fewer workers) as well as being variable costs.
For every "high skilled" maintenance job, there are 5 to 10 low skill jobs, where employees are mostly trained in less than a day. This includes labour to set up machines for changing product lines.
The machines can replace many moderate skill jobs.
Of course, the machines produce much more product for the number of employees.
However, there are more & more higher skilled jobs in the service industry.
I’m not disagreeing with the article. I’m lamenting the fact that his so-called goal of reviving American manufacturing is a hollow promise of a coming exponential increase in manufacturing jobs as result. China has swallowed the world’s manufacturing might and the gap only widens day by day. That’s all.
Understood. The point of my comments has been that American manufacturing has not disappeared. I'm willing to wager that there are many flourishing manufacturing plants near you. American manufacturing has been optimized for labor and capital productivity, and return on investment. It will never disappear.
China has traded their people's lives for pieces of paper (treasuries) and the hollow promise of real estate gains. Their lives (Chinese lives) have improved tremendously which is a good thing for the people, but they have a looming demographic problem (they are going to be old before they are generally rich). They have also become more expensive.
Eventually, their economy will become more service dominated (like the US) and the manufacturing capacity will rebalance around the world with lower wage countries manufacturing more (India is next, because they are generally well educated and they do not have the demographic problem) until the system rebalances again until all countries have a generally equal income.
Maybe at that point, we'll stop worrying about fictitious accounting problems like trade deficits and work on the real problems like global warming and disease.
The larger problem (Apr 9) is that tariffs will immediately cut off (via price increases) all Chinese (and likely all Far East) manufactured components, for which many US industries (e.g., bicycle manufacturers) are dependent for sufficient parts to put them out of business effectively immediately as finding other suppliers in the current climate will be months if not years.
I agree with your observation and thanks for representing the 'value added' by human thought in the chain. Having spent 40 years in designing and building industrial facilities specialising in automation and control, we sometimes become captive to what I would call 'binary thinking'.
I have had 'programmers' that believe everything that they capture through their systems without adequate appreciation of the processes that are being controlled.
For example, a 'Clean Fuels Project' in a refinery saw some purely physical conditions (a blocked valve) that was inrecognised by the over-educated and under-experienced programmers.
An experienced plant operator with greater diversity of tradesmenlike skills and processes recognised the condition and alerted me to get 'the right people' to maintain the system.
You sound like someone who appreciates the subtle intricacies of over-simplified views of automation.
I have programmed and managed programmers of automation systems. The greatest value any stakeholder in automation systems can provide is the ability to recognise 'outlier' conditions and communicate across a diverse range of views. So, when the Malcolm Gladwell proposed view of 10,000 hours to develop expertise is ignored when considering a simple metric of jobs growth, there is, in my opinion, great danger that profitability will see inexperience risking productivity when financially motivated 'leaders' forsake quality and safety.
Read Thomas Friedman’s column last month about how the Chinese investment in manufacturing robotics has created huge factories with no one but a couple of maintenance guys who turn the lights on once or twice a week to oil some machine.
An old friend was one of Kabota's first hires in the US. He told me of visiting a Kabota factory in Japan. It was like the old joke of the Lights out factory with only one employee. A night watchman with a dog. The dog's job was to bite the watchman if he touched anything. Soon airliners will be flying with one copilot and a dog.
The answer is no. If manufacturers have to bring back plants to the U.S. and pay U.S. workers U.S. wages, manufacturers will simply substitute capital for labor as much as possible. And considering that the jobs brought back will mostly be in low workers' skill industries anyway, like textiles and furniture making, jobs that essentially involve workers folding flap a and inserting it into slot b over and over and over again, it won't be hard for manufacturers to put in machines to do those jobs. Indeed, they will have to if they expect to make any money from producing their products.
Having worked in some highly automated chemical plants, I can assure you that there would still be new jobs, despite robots. Of course modern manufacturing does not require the legions of people who worked in factories of old, but there is still plenty to do. Maintenance of course, a lot of material handling at pallet scale and larger, quality checks all through the process are still more human than fully robotic. And since a lot of items are made in short production runs, there’s work required for all of the product changeovers. Because of the amount of equipment that modern factory workers oversee, there’s jobs tend to pay pretty well.
Spot on. The idea that all manufacturing involves human beings standing around an assembly line manipulating their hands fundamentally misunderstands the nature of modern industry.
No, it involves humans standing around doing mostly simple things to coordinate with machines, which do almost all the heavy lifting. A 12-year-old could do most modern factory jobs.
David it could actually reduce jobs overall as re-shoring often from a near shore or best shore location makes it attractive to revisit your entire supply chain and automate all functions where the law of diminishing previously before would have prevented it
Machines break down, so yes, there will be human labor involved as long as there are no repair robots that can do that job. Given the state of art in robotics the day when no humans are needed in a factory is still a long time in the future.
It isn't just about jobs. It is about interdependence, fragility, and, ultimately, safety from harm. I've become convinced that all interdependence is potentially a big problem - and that we need to be self-sufficient as a country. Ironically, such self sufficiency allows us to create non-critical interdependencies of the right types - helping the world. Unfortunately, such a goal is totally incompatible with the goals of those who control our capitalist market economy which we now have.
Removing interdependance will increase costs. So it would be best done, as you suggest, in areas where dependance is much more risky. A related approach is to avoid dependance on unreliable sources. Like, for the US, limiting interdependace on countries outside Canada & Mexico, since transportation & their economies are reliable. Maybe also Europe, as they have also been a reliable partner.
Govt policies, such as tarifs & quotas, related to who we trust can push companies to cooperate.
Note that Japanese policies greatly reduce the import of certain food products, for their security. The US could use a similar approach.
I think much more is possible with modern technology. Robotics/AI means that we can automate an incredible number of things (at one point I was working in robotics and was going to go back for a PhD - when I realized that all my work was targeted at reducing costs and replacing labor, as opposed to providing a higher quality of life for everyone.) So we could focus development on complete independence for all essentials, and providing them at a very low cost. This dramatically changes the trade-offs, and would allow us the freedom - both economically and morally, to choose trading partners to promote worldwide quality of life. Partner reliability and economic costs would become essentially unimportant as trade-offs.
Sadly this is only partially true. Some US citizens did indeed vote for this mess but fully 89 million people did not even bother to get up off their asses to vote. Makes me sick.
It's caused by ignorance. Even among many Democratic voters, political literacy is low. People indeed do more and more what Trump told them to do: when thinking about politics, don't ask what you can do for your country, don't even study what an incumbent administration did for the country, just look at your own kitchen table and ask yourself whether you subjectively feel you can BUY more or less. And that's it. No fact-checking, no understanding of how the democratic legislative process works, not even moral values play a role. Just selfish materialism and hyperindividualism.
Obviously, this characterizes much of American culture today, which means that it's not exactly the fault of those who didn't vote. If you don't understand that democracy is slow and messy, and you're "uneducated", you can easily lose hope and feel that your vote won't count (THE main reason why people tend to give up voting or never even think of voting).
At the same time, this also means that WE can really do something to save democracy in the US: INFORM people of why those ideas are false and empower them to vote. If we all work on this, we WILL win the next battle.
As a Canadian, when I see clips of what is shown on Fox "News" I am shocked by the lies, negativity and total lack of respect and professionalism. Encouraging black and white, simplistic thinking, and disparaging public institutions, leads to disengaged citizens who either don't vote, or elect con men. If this is what most Americans watch for supposed news, how are you going to get out of this mess.
Yes, Lynn FOX is completely propaganda for RW ideologies, though those have morphed from pro business + a little culture war into the cult of personality that is Trumpism (more culture war, anti intellectual, nativist, populist, and thoughtless). They mix lies and news in a way their viewers can hardly tell the difference (even if they are so inclined to try).
Life in the US has been easy. We haven't had to deal with terrible dysfunction on the scale that would make being informed a priority.
I also think the upheavals of 2019-20 with BLM etc. turned a lot of young people off. Two of my kids got totally disgusted by the hard left's radical thought and behavior. My daughter was in NY in an elite college and they were doing the "defund the police". We're not rich and she had to work. She was glad of the police because she walked around sketchy areas at night. These same elite kids raising a ruckus and attacking each other over race/gender verbiage never talked to the security or food service people who were black and Hispanic even though they saw them everyday.
Fox Mews and the rest of the right wing echo chamber bear much of the responsibility for this. But the Democratic Party needs a reboot, for sure. Understanding the needs of the poorest people and how to improve the lives of workers is paramount.
The Democrats didn't fully engage against the propaganda. They didn't challenge the immigration misinformation, where a bipartisan solution they supported was blocked by the trumpists. Trump's action against a real solution should have been highlighted more.
Lack of limitations on election spending means in effect that elections can be almost bought.
The electoral system gives the president considerable powers, without necessarily controling the Congress.
A parliamentory system, as in Canada or the UK, where the prime minister is the leader of the largest party (except sometimes in minority govts), means that the leadership is never locked in for 4 years, so govt policy is more influenced by coming elections.
In the case of minority govts, without a president at the top,
the govt must make compromises to stay in power, which takes into account views of the opposition.
If you don’t pay for your news, you either get an hour of evening news which is 15 mins of ads and a couple of feel-goods thrown in. That’s at best. Second-best/worst is getting it from social media. Worst is from straight-up lying media.
If you believe the above, then it should come as no surprise that ppl are blissfully ignorant of what is going on, even as their government is burned to the ground.
Not to let Americans off the hook at all, but the current MAGA regime came to power and regained that power in ‘24 as a result of a massive and global misinformation campaign conducted over decades that has captured the minds of 77 million voters and millions more who didn’t bother to vote as Greg observed at 9:08. But the US is now trapped in this mess because it is unique among democracies in that its constitution still includes features that were compromises to accommodate wealthy Southern slave owners and their states. Four of them are: 2-us senators per state regardless of population, the existence of the electoral college, states are responsible for running elections at all levels of government, state legislatures are responsible for drawing US House district maps.
Can’t argue with you on that. But it’s what happens in the 7-8 swing states that will determine our future as a democracy thanks to the electoral college. The fact is that we need far greater voting protections in our constitution than we currently have. Laws can be repealed and also overruled by SCOTUS as we’ve seen happen. The abomination called The Safe Act is about to be passed in the House as we speak…designed to disenfranchise millions of American women.
Contrarian view/thought. I just read that it would make rural voters have to drive a long way to register to vote. Those are overwhelmingly Trump voters.
I'm not sure about the disenfranchisement of married women. I didn't have any problem getting a passport even though my birth certificate and legal name are different.
I think the party leaders have the wrong end of the stick. MAGAs rely on low info voters. They do best with the occasional uneducated voters. This law may very well effect them more than the Democrats who rely on educated voters.
Personally, I wasn't worried about voter fraud. I'm more concerned about Trump calling off elections for some made up reason or refusing to accept if he loses again.
It could backfire I suppose but I don’t think MAGA Republicans would pursue this if they hadn’t done the calculus on which party it would mostly advantage. The problem isn’t in getting a passport. The problem is that 20+ million voting age American women don’t have one and their birth certificate may not match their current legal name. And what do you think Trump will do to the staffing at the State Department that issues passports in the next 20 months?
". I just read that it would make rural voters have to drive a long way to register to vote. Those are overwhelmingly Trump voters."
They are, and are the residents of thier favorite 'sea of red' election result maps...land still doesn't vote, people do.
"I'm not sure about the disenfranchisement of married women. I didn't have any problem getting a passport even though my birth certificate and legal name are different."
When did you do this? Under a previous Administration or under the current regime?
I'm just a civil engineer so I have to keep repeating this: tariffs raise the cost of foreign goods, giving room for more expensive domestic producers to enter the market, but in the end, the goods cost more, foreign or domestic. And the broader economy is wrecked by tariffs & reciprocal tariffs. Seems like an expensive way to get a few more jobs.
Professor, it would be good to hear from you on the benefits of the ending free trade regieme. I remember hearing that free trade lifted 1 to 2 billion people out of abject poverty over the last 30 years. Your opinion, please.
I believe it's true that free trade lifted 1 or 2 billion people out of abject poverty - in other countries. It knocked a few million in the U.S. >into< abject poverty. Some were able to transition into the "service" sector, some went into construction - and were summarily and unceremoniously replaced by cheaper imported labor.
The only jobs remaining for those not fortunate enough to have at least a bachelors degree are undignified low wage positions like Charbucks barista, Hotel desk clerk, retail store "greeter", security guards, etc. Driver jobs will soon be replaced by fully autonomous car and truck drones.
A lot of the skilled labor jobs are not hard to get into. But a lot of people don't want to get dirty or work with their hands. Physical labor is totally alien to most people. Personally, I like it.
Hyperlocal delivery will be a boom industry (already is, actually) because more and more cities will come to realize urban traffic and big-ass trucks are incompatible. Small delivery vans & ebikes need real people driving.
That "can be" is doing a heavy lift up there. "Can be" has not cut it so far in the autonomosity sweeps (this per my observations in the Autonomous City of San Francisco).
And drones will require 1) operators, and 2) receivers, so I ain't convinced as of yet.
Outsourcing jobs to lower wage countries reduced the prices of imported goods these countries produced. It also reduced the proportion of lower paid jobs.
However those with lower skills could be worse off, despite the relatively lower prices for many goods.
In the past, a much larger part of the population had much lower than the average wage.
It is naive to think that better wages will easily come to those with less education.
Computer programming wasn't a lower paid job, and not low skilled. The same can be said for designers and accountants - also often offshored.
I agree it's naive to think better wages - or even any jobs at all - will easily come to the less educated, if at all. That's why we ought to have a basic minimum income.
I’m just delighted to see anyone posting the FRED charts of manufacturing employment, which clearly show deindustrialization started long before NAFTA. Having lived through stagflation and the early 1980s recessions, I’m tired of listening to revisionist Republicans and ignorant youth* claim the decline started in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration.
(*PBS Newshour and The Daily Show 3/31/25 interviews with talking heads from American Compass)
Actually, it started right after Tricky Dickie and Hank went to China to cut a trade deal. Within a year, everything had a "Made in China" sticker on it.
I also remember a textile workers union leader going on TV and saying something to the effect of "they're going to ship your job overseas next". She was right.
Labor saving started with electrification; first with the light bulb and then motors, both being labor and capital saving technologies. Or maybe steam engines, in the late 18th century. Or a while earlier, with the invention of the wheel. Or ...
Have a great holiday! This is an example of “wherever you go, there you are, but in a good way. NYTimes has story about a dachshund lost on an Australian island that remains alive, but elusive, apropos of nothing but the date.
Turns out it’s not a joke. I assumed it was because I just read the NYTIMES headline, as I cancelled my subscription out of frustration with their inability to meet the moment with their serious headlines, and stories. Here’s the full story in the Guardian to whom I have made a donation in appreciation for them not putting up a paywall, although I get why newspapers do.
Most importantly, enjoy your well-earned vacation. Another issue of the manufacturing myth - its wages are the key to the return to a robust middle-class for blue collar workers. According to BLS, the mean hourly wage for production workers is $18. The starting wage at our local Costco is $20/hour. Plus, Costco has a significant benefits package. So unless unions return as a significant countervailing force to management, the return of manufacturing won't mean the return of solid middle-class jobs.
When MAGAs realize how Trump policies screw them: "I blame Biden. He shoulda done a better job explaining how Trump's policies were gonna screw people like me. That's why I'm still MAGA.”
Trump World & CalvinBall: make rules up as you go...
Quite some progressives think the same way, unfortunately. Fascism can grab power whenever political literacy is low. In a REAL democracy, it's the MEDIA who inform people of who did what in DC and of the state of the union, NOT politicians (who are having a more than full-time job with governing - at least if they truly care about it rather than tweeting and golfing instead).
That's because of the GOP's SC Citizens United ruling. Pelosi already passed a campaign finance bill in the House years ago, bill that included repealing Citizens United, so that billionaires can no longer buy the US government. Obviously, the GOP continues to support the ruling, so as long as "we the people" don't give the House and WH to Democrats AND a 60 seat majority in the Senate, that problem will persist...
Global competition requires manufacturers to maximize efficiency. They must utilize raw materials and labor in the most economical way to remain competitive. It is a carefully and cleverly choreographed dance that has been working fairly well… until now.
America First’s isolation of the US economy will increase the average manufacturing costs of most products, and it will ultimately raise prices for American consumers.
It is also making us the pariah among all trading nations… Liberation Day!
and science, and technology, and all that actually made us great
and for what?
To bring back sock and tee-shirt production to the USA?
Will expensive socks revive the "darning industry" (mom labor)?
Will expensive sweaters bring back the "knitting industry" (mom labor)?
IVF, knitting and darning in Trump's "bag for women" that he mentioned the other day.
Honestly, if not for Dems, we would probably be the only nation with a large subsidized horse and buggy industry as the GOP only look backwards (and have poor hindsight)
Industrial jobs were originally the worst of them all with people working long hours for dirt poor wages in dangerous conditions - it was, after all, largely manual labor
Only unions and those wages caused us to want these jobs to remain in the USA.
Otherwise, there is not much to keep these jobs from being the same pay as hotel housekeeping or retail.
So, why not unionize more service jobs and give them the same prestige?
Why?
Because we can't, as a nation, culturally wrap our heads around the fact that manual work traditionally done by women should pay good wages, and that really is the bottom line.
Period.
So, it seems they will either be brining back sock production and make them expensive and worthy of darning, or they will bring back the sweatshop - you know - back to the "gilded age" Trump talks about with masses living in squalor and a wealthy few (BTW this does not generate the needed GDP to remain a superpower).
Does anyone think car manufacturers will want to expand here or remain if a lot of people here can't afford new cars?
Honestly, our roadways may start to look a bit like Cuba with people trying to keep what they got running with old parts from the junkyard.
Where do the GOP knuckleheads think the incentive for growth and rebuilding will come from if we fall into a deep recession or depression which is what happened the last time there was a trade war?
They really have not thought this though.
Clearly tourism will be toast, as well, since Trump is making a visit here too scarry for many.
I hope the day never comes when we won’t need real musicians and real singers. I know they are coming, halfway here, and will be hard to distinguish from flesh and blood. But I don’t want them and I hope we have more sense.
If they do take over, maybe we’ll have to create a synthetic audience for them. I know I won’t be listening.
Everyone is feeding at the consumer trough. The Fed guides the banks to usury interest rates on elevated debt from the inflationary period and now the government see's consumers as suckers for high sales taxes.
I just won't be spending. Technically, it's a moot point cause I ain't got no money hihi.
Yeah, my estimation exactly. When items price themselves out of range, the buyers decrease. This is not disputed. Available cash will go toward more/other less expensive (and more necessary) commodities. And if all prices punch higher, fewer of everything will be purchased, tax cuts for the wealthy notwithstanding.
To get the manufacturing jobs that has migrated to countries with lower wages is desolutional. Much better is to invest in really good free education for all.
It is very interesting to read that manufacturing is no longer the major source of employment in America. The tariffs are a misguided attempt to return to an older time. Our unemployment level is below 5%, where will the workers for these new jobs come from. It may take 5 years to go from concept to built facility. By the more robotic operations will working. They are a tax on us. The regime will collect the tariff at our borders. and we will pay the importers the increase in the cost of the goods. That new source of income may pay for the taxes that billionaires and international corporations do not pay. We are the suckers.
This is the bill of goods sold to male voters, especially those with disdain for formal education and a pile of resentment. You promise to being back coal, in a world which needs neither the coal nor requires many workers to produce it. You promise to bring back manufacturing jobs with tariffs. Apparently these men want to do repetitively physical labor (without too much complexity) for high wages with good health care. They want to do shift work, not get too filthy, and not worry about layoffs. There is also something about running machines or equipment that speaks to them. Stocking shelves at Amazon doesn't quite cut it. The idea of churning out widgets gives them some satisfaction.
I've had a...varied...career. One of the things I did was make stuff. It was eminently satisfactory and engaging work (small factory*, got to do lots of different things). Later on I did other stuff that was equally engaging.
*Most factories in America were small then; don't know about now.
Well I think all this has bern romanticized for these male voters. Many of them have not worked in these factories making things or for relatively brief periods. So they hear about that satisfaction. But they don't hear about the days when the machine doesn't work, they run out of critical material as a supplier tries to squeeze them, about the back or muscle ache of the repetitive motion injury, the mind numbing drudgery of the every day. These male voters feel they are owed a good living without actually getting any type of training, doing any leg work, relocating as necessary, and they only come out to vote when Musk appears with his checkbook. Their disaffection is infectious, so that even male voters with decent construction jobs feel some solidarity.
This is a public forum, not a one on one conversation with Krugman. And have you paid attention to what Trump is doing to his vocal critics today? That doesn't exactly guarantee "safe traveling"...
If new, state of the art manufacturing plants are essentially run with robotics anyway, would there actually be any net new American assembly line jobs anyway?
Apparently no one saw the 2019 documentary “American Factory” (Netflix), which ended with Chinese manufacturers offshoring from China to lower labor cost countries and substituting automation for Chinese laborers. What goes around comes around. Chinese laborers are facing the same problems Americans did 40+ years ago, and Europeans did 90+ years ago. (People forget the US undercut Europe, which was the innovation center during the Industrial Revolution, like Asia did with the US in the last 60 years).
And Trump's favorite President McKinley 'who made us the richest of all time' with his tariffs, presided over a United States in the same position of China of 40 years ago: a country just starting it's industrialization fuelled by cheap disposable labor
Yep. We are killing the economy for a few thousand mfg jobs.
And creating previously unthinkable friends groups, like the China-Japan-South Korea trade movement announced a couple of days ago. Those three countries have been sniping at each other since the end of WWII, but Trump has managed to get them to sublimate their grievances and work together. So much American winning!
We're hanging out with the mean girl who insults and bullies everyone. No wonder they're making new friend groups. Soon the only ones who will talk to us are Russia, Hungary, North Korea and Israel.
Ah, but the profit margins!
Speaking of profits - I would argue that the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world - helps the US
and doesn’t have much of an impact on the trade deficit as PK indicates.
What it does accomplish is for us to mint a $ 100 bill ( for something like
.05 cents) - buy $100 of foreign
goods and if they just hoard the bill
in a bank or a mosque ( as Iraq did ) -
We get a pretty good deal !
The problem is going to be if the dollar is no longer hoarded in reserve. Then all those $100 bills
are going to bounce back HERE .
Instead of brother can you spare a dime - it will be something like brother can you spare $500 bucks .
What you're referring to is foreign exchange, AKA FX in the industry.
What you describe would be 100% true if we were still stuck with the gold standard, which, thankfully, we're not.
Currency reserves are stored as "accounts" rather than physical currency, so the actual impact would be fairly minimal. It would really depend on the currency value vis a vis other currencies rather than whether or not a currency is the reserve standard or not.
So, worry not. We'll still be fine - as long as the value of the dollar doesn't crash, which unfortunately, with this administration, is far from certain.
Unrelated, but your username is great.
"Give me that old-time religion", a vibrant Rust-Belt revival of steel, autos, chemicals, etc. God is in his Heaven, and all is right with Murka.
Um...no. Former Chief Operating Officer here of a company that made 20 million parts a day in 45 plants around the world. While there is a lot more automation in factories these days, you will never eliminate people on the shop floor. The most productive plants are those that integrate the work of the machines and the people in a way that takes advantage of what each does best. It is called "autonomation".
Productivity does eliminate people's jobs, but you will never eliminate them all.
What exactly are you disagreeing with? Your comment doesn’t refute the OP.
I'm objecting to the poster's premise that, "...new, state of the art manufacturing plants are essentially run with robotics anyway,...". They are not. The reasons are both financial and practical.
Robotics and automation are a fixed cost, your return on investment is dependent on whether you can predict the demand nearly perfectly. If you over estimate the demand, you will either overproduce and have a lot of inventory, or you will underutilize your equipment and have an investment loss. This is, of course, a timing issue (i.e. can you build inventory long enough until demand catches up or gets higher and can you endure the cash flow issues).
Shop floor workers are a variable cost. They can either be reassigned or laid off when demand fluctuates. Balancing fixed and variable costs against demand and price is the key to success in manufacturing.
The practical issue is that, some automation (hard, dedicated automation) cannot be easily repurposed to make other products when customer tastes change. People are very flexible and can be easily repurposed. Robots, of course, can be reprogrammed, but that takes time and effort and still may result in stranded, underutilized capital. Lastly, your shop floor people are your best source for improvement ideas. Robots are unlikely to make many suggestions for improvement.
If all manufacturing could be profitably and practically automated, it would be, and there would be no shop floor workers anywhere, but it can't, so there are shop floor workers. Just ask Elon Musk, who tried to fully automate his first Telsa assembly factory and failed miserably. Manufacturing needs people.
There's not just one, simple answer. You need to match the people tasks and the automation tasks to the product current and anticipated future needs.
Thanks for your informative response.
The OP wasn’t stating manufacturing workers will go away IMO, so I don’t think he/she would actually disagree with you. You both agree that adding new manufacturing capacity wouldn’t generate big job gains.
"Robots are unlikely to make many suggestions for improvement." That is a great line!
Followup: would it be fair to say that a shop floor worker in a modern factory is highly skilled and educated vs, say 50 years ago, and far fewer? If so, it is not going to help many and only those either with skills education or be trainable.
Shop floor workers have always been highly skilled. In our factories, even when we had little automation, the workers needed to be highly skilled in the sense that if something changed in the process (material variation, machine problem or variation) they needed to know how to spot it and fix it. Better yet, they needed to know how to keep the process stable and avoid changes or issues.
We made a lot of rubber parts which is a little like baking. The shop floor workers lived with the machines and processes for 8 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. After awhile, the people got to know their machines and knew, almost instinctively, how to keep things stable. If we ever wanted to improve a process, we always included the people on the floor because they knew many things that were either not measured or were unmeasurable.
These things are especially true if you are making a high mix of product, which means your need a flexible manufacturing process. People are very flexible and hard automation is not. Robots are more flexible, but need to be programmed and reprogrammed. AI might help with the reprograming if it leads to robots understanding verbal instructions...but you'll still need people to do it and watch the shop floor.
Yes, you will likely need far fewer workers, but that is a trend that has been going on for years and it is a good trend. Why have people doing a job that a machine can do when we need people to solve many other problems? The human capital needs to be reallocated over time and it has been as you can see by the fact that we have less people producing the same manufacturing output (productivity) and unemployment is very low.
Thanks for clarifying.
Your insight suggests that the scope for addressing jobs for many US citizens improving their employment situation via re-homing manufacturing is unlikely. The current and future roles of humans in manufacturing are very different from those in 1960.
Those without the skills or education or struggle to acquire those skills will remain on the sidelines.
One advantage of automation is that it can use much less skilled people on the factory floor, which means lower wages (for fewer workers) as well as being variable costs.
See my comment above. Also, it is not likely that the jobs will be lower wage. Automation needs maintenance and that is not low wage work.
Lastly, automation needs to be applied in a smart way. It depends on the product volumes needed and the standardization of the product design.
Have you ever worked in a factory ?
For every "high skilled" maintenance job, there are 5 to 10 low skill jobs, where employees are mostly trained in less than a day. This includes labour to set up machines for changing product lines.
The machines can replace many moderate skill jobs.
Of course, the machines produce much more product for the number of employees.
However, there are more & more higher skilled jobs in the service industry.
I’m not disagreeing with the article. I’m lamenting the fact that his so-called goal of reviving American manufacturing is a hollow promise of a coming exponential increase in manufacturing jobs as result. China has swallowed the world’s manufacturing might and the gap only widens day by day. That’s all.
Understood. The point of my comments has been that American manufacturing has not disappeared. I'm willing to wager that there are many flourishing manufacturing plants near you. American manufacturing has been optimized for labor and capital productivity, and return on investment. It will never disappear.
China has traded their people's lives for pieces of paper (treasuries) and the hollow promise of real estate gains. Their lives (Chinese lives) have improved tremendously which is a good thing for the people, but they have a looming demographic problem (they are going to be old before they are generally rich). They have also become more expensive.
Eventually, their economy will become more service dominated (like the US) and the manufacturing capacity will rebalance around the world with lower wage countries manufacturing more (India is next, because they are generally well educated and they do not have the demographic problem) until the system rebalances again until all countries have a generally equal income.
Maybe at that point, we'll stop worrying about fictitious accounting problems like trade deficits and work on the real problems like global warming and disease.
The larger problem (Apr 9) is that tariffs will immediately cut off (via price increases) all Chinese (and likely all Far East) manufactured components, for which many US industries (e.g., bicycle manufacturers) are dependent for sufficient parts to put them out of business effectively immediately as finding other suppliers in the current climate will be months if not years.
Yes. That's true. I think the salient point is that we have to look at the world of work differently than it was viewed in the 1950s and 1850s.
We need to value other kinds of work as much as we did the unionized manufacturing work of eighty years ago.
But what about the development of AI ? Any projection on that in the effects it will have on manufacturing?
I've seen "AI" in action, if you are thinking of robotics.
Like machines automatically picking up parts and placing them accurately. It is fun to watch.
It allows increased production with fewer workers, higher quality and fewer production interruptions.
Hi Ted,
I agree with your observation and thanks for representing the 'value added' by human thought in the chain. Having spent 40 years in designing and building industrial facilities specialising in automation and control, we sometimes become captive to what I would call 'binary thinking'.
I have had 'programmers' that believe everything that they capture through their systems without adequate appreciation of the processes that are being controlled.
For example, a 'Clean Fuels Project' in a refinery saw some purely physical conditions (a blocked valve) that was inrecognised by the over-educated and under-experienced programmers.
An experienced plant operator with greater diversity of tradesmenlike skills and processes recognised the condition and alerted me to get 'the right people' to maintain the system.
You sound like someone who appreciates the subtle intricacies of over-simplified views of automation.
I have programmed and managed programmers of automation systems. The greatest value any stakeholder in automation systems can provide is the ability to recognise 'outlier' conditions and communicate across a diverse range of views. So, when the Malcolm Gladwell proposed view of 10,000 hours to develop expertise is ignored when considering a simple metric of jobs growth, there is, in my opinion, great danger that profitability will see inexperience risking productivity when financially motivated 'leaders' forsake quality and safety.
Cheers!
Read Thomas Friedman’s column last month about how the Chinese investment in manufacturing robotics has created huge factories with no one but a couple of maintenance guys who turn the lights on once or twice a week to oil some machine.
Lights off factories have been around for a long time in advanced economies.
An old friend was one of Kabota's first hires in the US. He told me of visiting a Kabota factory in Japan. It was like the old joke of the Lights out factory with only one employee. A night watchman with a dog. The dog's job was to bite the watchman if he touched anything. Soon airliners will be flying with one copilot and a dog.
The answer is no. If manufacturers have to bring back plants to the U.S. and pay U.S. workers U.S. wages, manufacturers will simply substitute capital for labor as much as possible. And considering that the jobs brought back will mostly be in low workers' skill industries anyway, like textiles and furniture making, jobs that essentially involve workers folding flap a and inserting it into slot b over and over and over again, it won't be hard for manufacturers to put in machines to do those jobs. Indeed, they will have to if they expect to make any money from producing their products.
Having worked in some highly automated chemical plants, I can assure you that there would still be new jobs, despite robots. Of course modern manufacturing does not require the legions of people who worked in factories of old, but there is still plenty to do. Maintenance of course, a lot of material handling at pallet scale and larger, quality checks all through the process are still more human than fully robotic. And since a lot of items are made in short production runs, there’s work required for all of the product changeovers. Because of the amount of equipment that modern factory workers oversee, there’s jobs tend to pay pretty well.
Spot on. The idea that all manufacturing involves human beings standing around an assembly line manipulating their hands fundamentally misunderstands the nature of modern industry.
No, it involves humans standing around doing mostly simple things to coordinate with machines, which do almost all the heavy lifting. A 12-year-old could do most modern factory jobs.
David it could actually reduce jobs overall as re-shoring often from a near shore or best shore location makes it attractive to revisit your entire supply chain and automate all functions where the law of diminishing previously before would have prevented it
Machines break down, so yes, there will be human labor involved as long as there are no repair robots that can do that job. Given the state of art in robotics the day when no humans are needed in a factory is still a long time in the future.
It isn't just about jobs. It is about interdependence, fragility, and, ultimately, safety from harm. I've become convinced that all interdependence is potentially a big problem - and that we need to be self-sufficient as a country. Ironically, such self sufficiency allows us to create non-critical interdependencies of the right types - helping the world. Unfortunately, such a goal is totally incompatible with the goals of those who control our capitalist market economy which we now have.
Removing interdependance will increase costs. So it would be best done, as you suggest, in areas where dependance is much more risky. A related approach is to avoid dependance on unreliable sources. Like, for the US, limiting interdependace on countries outside Canada & Mexico, since transportation & their economies are reliable. Maybe also Europe, as they have also been a reliable partner.
Govt policies, such as tarifs & quotas, related to who we trust can push companies to cooperate.
Note that Japanese policies greatly reduce the import of certain food products, for their security. The US could use a similar approach.
I think much more is possible with modern technology. Robotics/AI means that we can automate an incredible number of things (at one point I was working in robotics and was going to go back for a PhD - when I realized that all my work was targeted at reducing costs and replacing labor, as opposed to providing a higher quality of life for everyone.) So we could focus development on complete independence for all essentials, and providing them at a very low cost. This dramatically changes the trade-offs, and would allow us the freedom - both economically and morally, to choose trading partners to promote worldwide quality of life. Partner reliability and economic costs would become essentially unimportant as trade-offs.
Might increase the number of skilled maintenance people to fix all those robots.
Americans at least voted for this mess. Canada very unhappy that we are being dragged down ahead of you and the rest of the world behind
Sadly this is only partially true. Some US citizens did indeed vote for this mess but fully 89 million people did not even bother to get up off their asses to vote. Makes me sick.
It's caused by ignorance. Even among many Democratic voters, political literacy is low. People indeed do more and more what Trump told them to do: when thinking about politics, don't ask what you can do for your country, don't even study what an incumbent administration did for the country, just look at your own kitchen table and ask yourself whether you subjectively feel you can BUY more or less. And that's it. No fact-checking, no understanding of how the democratic legislative process works, not even moral values play a role. Just selfish materialism and hyperindividualism.
Obviously, this characterizes much of American culture today, which means that it's not exactly the fault of those who didn't vote. If you don't understand that democracy is slow and messy, and you're "uneducated", you can easily lose hope and feel that your vote won't count (THE main reason why people tend to give up voting or never even think of voting).
At the same time, this also means that WE can really do something to save democracy in the US: INFORM people of why those ideas are false and empower them to vote. If we all work on this, we WILL win the next battle.
YES WE CAN!
As a Canadian, when I see clips of what is shown on Fox "News" I am shocked by the lies, negativity and total lack of respect and professionalism. Encouraging black and white, simplistic thinking, and disparaging public institutions, leads to disengaged citizens who either don't vote, or elect con men. If this is what most Americans watch for supposed news, how are you going to get out of this mess.
Yes, Lynn FOX is completely propaganda for RW ideologies, though those have morphed from pro business + a little culture war into the cult of personality that is Trumpism (more culture war, anti intellectual, nativist, populist, and thoughtless). They mix lies and news in a way their viewers can hardly tell the difference (even if they are so inclined to try).
Life in the US has been easy. We haven't had to deal with terrible dysfunction on the scale that would make being informed a priority.
I also think the upheavals of 2019-20 with BLM etc. turned a lot of young people off. Two of my kids got totally disgusted by the hard left's radical thought and behavior. My daughter was in NY in an elite college and they were doing the "defund the police". We're not rich and she had to work. She was glad of the police because she walked around sketchy areas at night. These same elite kids raising a ruckus and attacking each other over race/gender verbiage never talked to the security or food service people who were black and Hispanic even though they saw them everyday.
Fox Mews and the rest of the right wing echo chamber bear much of the responsibility for this. But the Democratic Party needs a reboot, for sure. Understanding the needs of the poorest people and how to improve the lives of workers is paramount.
The Democrats didn't fully engage against the propaganda. They didn't challenge the immigration misinformation, where a bipartisan solution they supported was blocked by the trumpists. Trump's action against a real solution should have been highlighted more.
They going to be able to buy a whole lot less.
And a whole bunch of us voted AGAINST this.
There are other problems with the US elections.
Lack of limitations on election spending means in effect that elections can be almost bought.
The electoral system gives the president considerable powers, without necessarily controling the Congress.
A parliamentory system, as in Canada or the UK, where the prime minister is the leader of the largest party (except sometimes in minority govts), means that the leadership is never locked in for 4 years, so govt policy is more influenced by coming elections.
In the case of minority govts, without a president at the top,
the govt must make compromises to stay in power, which takes into account views of the opposition.
You kinda hope they are hurt far more than you or I. I would bet they are so wrapped up on their phones they won’t realize what is happening to them.
If you don’t pay for your news, you either get an hour of evening news which is 15 mins of ads and a couple of feel-goods thrown in. That’s at best. Second-best/worst is getting it from social media. Worst is from straight-up lying media.
If you believe the above, then it should come as no surprise that ppl are blissfully ignorant of what is going on, even as their government is burned to the ground.
Not to let Americans off the hook at all, but the current MAGA regime came to power and regained that power in ‘24 as a result of a massive and global misinformation campaign conducted over decades that has captured the minds of 77 million voters and millions more who didn’t bother to vote as Greg observed at 9:08. But the US is now trapped in this mess because it is unique among democracies in that its constitution still includes features that were compromises to accommodate wealthy Southern slave owners and their states. Four of them are: 2-us senators per state regardless of population, the existence of the electoral college, states are responsible for running elections at all levels of government, state legislatures are responsible for drawing US House district maps.
I think the state level election system is our best hope for having elections in the coming years.
Can’t argue with you on that. But it’s what happens in the 7-8 swing states that will determine our future as a democracy thanks to the electoral college. The fact is that we need far greater voting protections in our constitution than we currently have. Laws can be repealed and also overruled by SCOTUS as we’ve seen happen. The abomination called The Safe Act is about to be passed in the House as we speak…designed to disenfranchise millions of American women.
Contrarian view/thought. I just read that it would make rural voters have to drive a long way to register to vote. Those are overwhelmingly Trump voters.
I'm not sure about the disenfranchisement of married women. I didn't have any problem getting a passport even though my birth certificate and legal name are different.
I think the party leaders have the wrong end of the stick. MAGAs rely on low info voters. They do best with the occasional uneducated voters. This law may very well effect them more than the Democrats who rely on educated voters.
Personally, I wasn't worried about voter fraud. I'm more concerned about Trump calling off elections for some made up reason or refusing to accept if he loses again.
You had no problem getting a passport but many people can’t afford one.
It could backfire I suppose but I don’t think MAGA Republicans would pursue this if they hadn’t done the calculus on which party it would mostly advantage. The problem isn’t in getting a passport. The problem is that 20+ million voting age American women don’t have one and their birth certificate may not match their current legal name. And what do you think Trump will do to the staffing at the State Department that issues passports in the next 20 months?
". I just read that it would make rural voters have to drive a long way to register to vote. Those are overwhelmingly Trump voters."
They are, and are the residents of thier favorite 'sea of red' election result maps...land still doesn't vote, people do.
"I'm not sure about the disenfranchisement of married women. I didn't have any problem getting a passport even though my birth certificate and legal name are different."
When did you do this? Under a previous Administration or under the current regime?
It’s still in Congress and may not even make it out of the House but if it does it will pass in the Senate and Trump will sign it.
I'm just a civil engineer so I have to keep repeating this: tariffs raise the cost of foreign goods, giving room for more expensive domestic producers to enter the market, but in the end, the goods cost more, foreign or domestic. And the broader economy is wrecked by tariffs & reciprocal tariffs. Seems like an expensive way to get a few more jobs.
Professor, it would be good to hear from you on the benefits of the ending free trade regieme. I remember hearing that free trade lifted 1 to 2 billion people out of abject poverty over the last 30 years. Your opinion, please.
Have a great vacation.
I believe it's true that free trade lifted 1 or 2 billion people out of abject poverty - in other countries. It knocked a few million in the U.S. >into< abject poverty. Some were able to transition into the "service" sector, some went into construction - and were summarily and unceremoniously replaced by cheaper imported labor.
The only jobs remaining for those not fortunate enough to have at least a bachelors degree are undignified low wage positions like Charbucks barista, Hotel desk clerk, retail store "greeter", security guards, etc. Driver jobs will soon be replaced by fully autonomous car and truck drones.
If you are willing to apprentice the trades often pay more than bachelor level jobs. HVAC techs, plumbers and electricians make very good pay.
IUOE, 20+ years, NYC. It did beat being a cube rat.
The protection of the union was, of course, indispensable. Prior jobs were in "right to work" states, didn't last.
A lot of the skilled labor jobs are not hard to get into. But a lot of people don't want to get dirty or work with their hands. Physical labor is totally alien to most people. Personally, I like it.
And if you can get in. Such positions are in high demand.
Like the medical profession, keep the numbers low and the cost high.
🎯
I remember when driving trucks was unionized through the teamsters and they had great pay and benefits.
Hyperlocal delivery will be a boom industry (already is, actually) because more and more cities will come to realize urban traffic and big-ass trucks are incompatible. Small delivery vans & ebikes need real people driving.
The small vans can easily be made fully autonomous. The e-bikes can (and will) be replaced with quadcopters.
That "can be" is doing a heavy lift up there. "Can be" has not cut it so far in the autonomosity sweeps (this per my observations in the Autonomous City of San Francisco).
And drones will require 1) operators, and 2) receivers, so I ain't convinced as of yet.
You mean yet. They're working furiously on it.
That's the problem with society today. Everything is done furiously!
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!
Outsourcing jobs to lower wage countries reduced the prices of imported goods these countries produced. It also reduced the proportion of lower paid jobs.
However those with lower skills could be worse off, despite the relatively lower prices for many goods.
In the past, a much larger part of the population had much lower than the average wage.
It is naive to think that better wages will easily come to those with less education.
Computer programming wasn't a lower paid job, and not low skilled. The same can be said for designers and accountants - also often offshored.
I agree it's naive to think better wages - or even any jobs at all - will easily come to the less educated, if at all. That's why we ought to have a basic minimum income.
So how many jobs will be lost when people decide they can’t afford non-essential items?
Frugality will be a necessity. Unfortunately most folks don't know how to buy smart and do with less. Cutting down on meat is a start.
I’m just delighted to see anyone posting the FRED charts of manufacturing employment, which clearly show deindustrialization started long before NAFTA. Having lived through stagflation and the early 1980s recessions, I’m tired of listening to revisionist Republicans and ignorant youth* claim the decline started in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration.
(*PBS Newshour and The Daily Show 3/31/25 interviews with talking heads from American Compass)
Actually, it started right after Tricky Dickie and Hank went to China to cut a trade deal. Within a year, everything had a "Made in China" sticker on it.
I also remember a textile workers union leader going on TV and saying something to the effect of "they're going to ship your job overseas next". She was right.
Labor saving started with electrification; first with the light bulb and then motors, both being labor and capital saving technologies. Or maybe steam engines, in the late 18th century. Or a while earlier, with the invention of the wheel. Or ...
Have a great holiday! This is an example of “wherever you go, there you are, but in a good way. NYTimes has story about a dachshund lost on an Australian island that remains alive, but elusive, apropos of nothing but the date.
I need to find that article!
Turns out it’s not a joke. I assumed it was because I just read the NYTIMES headline, as I cancelled my subscription out of frustration with their inability to meet the moment with their serious headlines, and stories. Here’s the full story in the Guardian to whom I have made a donation in appreciation for them not putting up a paywall, although I get why newspapers do.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/26/miniature-dachshund-valerie-lost-kangaroo-island-south-australia-found-alive
Most importantly, enjoy your well-earned vacation. Another issue of the manufacturing myth - its wages are the key to the return to a robust middle-class for blue collar workers. According to BLS, the mean hourly wage for production workers is $18. The starting wage at our local Costco is $20/hour. Plus, Costco has a significant benefits package. So unless unions return as a significant countervailing force to management, the return of manufacturing won't mean the return of solid middle-class jobs.
When MAGAs realize how Trump policies screw them: "I blame Biden. He shoulda done a better job explaining how Trump's policies were gonna screw people like me. That's why I'm still MAGA.”
Trump World & CalvinBall: make rules up as you go...
Of Course Trump Will Tank the Economy. It’s What Republicans Do. https://newrepublic.com/article/193360/trump-tank-economy-liberation-tariffs
Quite some progressives think the same way, unfortunately. Fascism can grab power whenever political literacy is low. In a REAL democracy, it's the MEDIA who inform people of who did what in DC and of the state of the union, NOT politicians (who are having a more than full-time job with governing - at least if they truly care about it rather than tweeting and golfing instead).
Most politicians spend a disproportionate amount of time fundraising, because of the power of money in politics.
That's because of the GOP's SC Citizens United ruling. Pelosi already passed a campaign finance bill in the House years ago, bill that included repealing Citizens United, so that billionaires can no longer buy the US government. Obviously, the GOP continues to support the ruling, so as long as "we the people" don't give the House and WH to Democrats AND a 60 seat majority in the Senate, that problem will persist...
Global competition requires manufacturers to maximize efficiency. They must utilize raw materials and labor in the most economical way to remain competitive. It is a carefully and cleverly choreographed dance that has been working fairly well… until now.
America First’s isolation of the US economy will increase the average manufacturing costs of most products, and it will ultimately raise prices for American consumers.
It is also making us the pariah among all trading nations… Liberation Day!
Liberation Day?
Liberation from logic, I guess...
and science, and technology, and all that actually made us great
and for what?
To bring back sock and tee-shirt production to the USA?
Will expensive socks revive the "darning industry" (mom labor)?
Will expensive sweaters bring back the "knitting industry" (mom labor)?
IVF, knitting and darning in Trump's "bag for women" that he mentioned the other day.
Honestly, if not for Dems, we would probably be the only nation with a large subsidized horse and buggy industry as the GOP only look backwards (and have poor hindsight)
Industrial jobs were originally the worst of them all with people working long hours for dirt poor wages in dangerous conditions - it was, after all, largely manual labor
Only unions and those wages caused us to want these jobs to remain in the USA.
Otherwise, there is not much to keep these jobs from being the same pay as hotel housekeeping or retail.
So, why not unionize more service jobs and give them the same prestige?
Why?
Because we can't, as a nation, culturally wrap our heads around the fact that manual work traditionally done by women should pay good wages, and that really is the bottom line.
Period.
So, it seems they will either be brining back sock production and make them expensive and worthy of darning, or they will bring back the sweatshop - you know - back to the "gilded age" Trump talks about with masses living in squalor and a wealthy few (BTW this does not generate the needed GDP to remain a superpower).
Does anyone think car manufacturers will want to expand here or remain if a lot of people here can't afford new cars?
Honestly, our roadways may start to look a bit like Cuba with people trying to keep what they got running with old parts from the junkyard.
Where do the GOP knuckleheads think the incentive for growth and rebuilding will come from if we fall into a deep recession or depression which is what happened the last time there was a trade war?
They really have not thought this though.
Clearly tourism will be toast, as well, since Trump is making a visit here too scarry for many.
Your opening point is only valid from the suicidally limited view of increasing quarterly corporate profits
I hope the day never comes when we won’t need real musicians and real singers. I know they are coming, halfway here, and will be hard to distinguish from flesh and blood. But I don’t want them and I hope we have more sense.
If they do take over, maybe we’ll have to create a synthetic audience for them. I know I won’t be listening.
If manufacturing ever does come back to the United States, the only workers who will be celebrating their return are robots.
Are we ready for a 25% sales tax increase?
No. I just won't be spending.
Everyone is feeding at the consumer trough. The Fed guides the banks to usury interest rates on elevated debt from the inflationary period and now the government see's consumers as suckers for high sales taxes.
I just won't be spending. Technically, it's a moot point cause I ain't got no money hihi.
6% state sales tax, 20% credit interest rate, 25% tariff. That means I will pay more in taxes and interest than for the product.
Only in America folks. This is how Billionaires become Billionaires, laughing all the way to the banks.
Yeah, my estimation exactly. When items price themselves out of range, the buyers decrease. This is not disputed. Available cash will go toward more/other less expensive (and more necessary) commodities. And if all prices punch higher, fewer of everything will be purchased, tax cuts for the wealthy notwithstanding.
Some of those things not purchased will be (are) health care and decent housing.
To get the manufacturing jobs that has migrated to countries with lower wages is desolutional. Much better is to invest in really good free education for all.
But then who would vote for a cretin?
That plus a basic minimum income.
It is very interesting to read that manufacturing is no longer the major source of employment in America. The tariffs are a misguided attempt to return to an older time. Our unemployment level is below 5%, where will the workers for these new jobs come from. It may take 5 years to go from concept to built facility. By the more robotic operations will working. They are a tax on us. The regime will collect the tariff at our borders. and we will pay the importers the increase in the cost of the goods. That new source of income may pay for the taxes that billionaires and international corporations do not pay. We are the suckers.
This is the bill of goods sold to male voters, especially those with disdain for formal education and a pile of resentment. You promise to being back coal, in a world which needs neither the coal nor requires many workers to produce it. You promise to bring back manufacturing jobs with tariffs. Apparently these men want to do repetitively physical labor (without too much complexity) for high wages with good health care. They want to do shift work, not get too filthy, and not worry about layoffs. There is also something about running machines or equipment that speaks to them. Stocking shelves at Amazon doesn't quite cut it. The idea of churning out widgets gives them some satisfaction.
I've had a...varied...career. One of the things I did was make stuff. It was eminently satisfactory and engaging work (small factory*, got to do lots of different things). Later on I did other stuff that was equally engaging.
*Most factories in America were small then; don't know about now.
Well I think all this has bern romanticized for these male voters. Many of them have not worked in these factories making things or for relatively brief periods. So they hear about that satisfaction. But they don't hear about the days when the machine doesn't work, they run out of critical material as a supplier tries to squeeze them, about the back or muscle ache of the repetitive motion injury, the mind numbing drudgery of the every day. These male voters feel they are owed a good living without actually getting any type of training, doing any leg work, relocating as necessary, and they only come out to vote when Musk appears with his checkbook. Their disaffection is infectious, so that even male voters with decent construction jobs feel some solidarity.
Exactly. The right wing media romanticizes the jobs of yore.
They never mention the horrifying reality of coal miners dying from black lung disease or women burning to death in factory fires.
It is all part of their culture of grievances and victimization that keeps the rubes voting for the oligarchs.
Thank you for continuing to educate your readers, Mr Krugman.
And very best wishes for the loveliest vacation with your wife
that the two of you can wrest from current events.
Undisclosed location? Well, I see a sansevieria, so it must be Belgium...
Aperol spritz?
Perhaps respecting his wish/need to travel anonymously (and therefore safely) means not trying to play detective here?
I know Krugman well enough to be able to gage his sense of humor.
This is a public forum, not a one on one conversation with Krugman. And have you paid attention to what Trump is doing to his vocal critics today? That doesn't exactly guarantee "safe traveling"...
He could have a side gig working for the Michelin guide undercover. Let him be—we all can use a break.
I thought maybe a negroni?