BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Since you don't like manufacturing jobs you won't complain when Trump moves a bunch of them back to the USA, right?
Of course not. But, as Springsteen said, "these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back". You can't bring them back. And you shouldn't try.
But why should I expect anyone in Trump's administration to listen to actual economists? He's already going down a protectionist road. A road that's been proven, time and time again, to be detrimental to economic prosperity. As Chuck Davenant wrote "the benefits of keeping a nation more cheaply supplied with foreign imports far outweighs the damage done to domestic employment." He succinctly stated that protectionist measures were "needless, unnatural, and can have no effect conducive to the public good. They encourage inefficient domestic industries with artificially high prices and throw good money after bad."
The grandfather of trade economics, Henry Martyn, noted that protectionists, by equating gold with wealth, repeat the mistake of King Midas. Precious metals are useful only because they can be exchanged for things we want. A nation's true wealth was defined by how much it consumed: "Bullion is only secondary and dependant, Cloaths and Manufactures are real and principal riches. Are not these things esteem'd Riches over the World? And that Country thought richest which most abounds in them? Holland is the Magazin of every Country's Manufacturers; English Cloth, French Wines, Indian Silks are treasur'd up there. If these things were not riches, they would not give their Bullion for 'em."
A nation's manufacturing base is a national security asset. Our ability to produce steel for consumer goods is critical to our ability to be able to pivot from a consumer economy to a war time economy.
Trump understands this and is taking steps to ensure our national security.