President Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S. If we forget that he can’t do what he claims he will, we can at least think about the horrid economic implications of any politician reviving the past. To do so is to repel the humans that drive all progress, followed by a steep decline for the city, state or nation on which the past is foisted.
In thinking about the manufacturing, mill, and mining jobs that Trump romanticizes, it’s easy to forget that like Bruce Springsteen, Trump is innocent of all three. Thought of another way, if Trump were as familiar with the factories, mills and mines as those who worked in them, he would in no way be promising to bring them back.
One of the truest of historical Americans economic truisms is the one about fathers and mothers from the past working in factories so that their children wouldn’t have to. According to those who knew it, factory work was dirty, exhausting, and most of all, dangerous. Those who entered factories, mills and mines each day did so fearful that they wouldn’t exit, or arguably worse, that they would exit permanently maimed.
This is important as a reminder of why factory, mill and mining towns from the U.S.’s more industrialized past are in many instances monuments to relative desperation in the present. What’s crucial about the sad state of once vibrant towns like Aliquippa (PA), Flint (MI) and Thurmond (WV) is that it wasn’t the departure or closure of factories, mills and mines that reduced them to tiny fractions of their formerly vibrant selves, but the sad fact that the factories, mills and mines lasted too long.
As is true with all business sectors, those that pursue stasis are quickly rendered past tense. While 100 years ago Flint could lay claim to being the city with the highest per capita income in the U.S., now it’s a model of decline. And its decline was authored by its people clinging to the past, and in clinging to it, driving out the human capital without which cities, towns and countries decline rapidly.
Notable about Flint 100 years ago is that it competed with Milwaukee, New York and Los Angeles for the biggest manufacturing base. Those were the jobs back then. But as we see with the enormous wealth in both Los Angeles and New York today, manufacturing jobs aren’t the jobs now. Which is why there are far more Americans with Flint and Milwaukee origins working in New York and Los Angeles than there is the reverse. In other words, a not insignificant driver of the prosperity in U.S. cities “bereft” of manufacturing jobs is the people who left manufacturing cities and towns intent on never looking back.
Considering all of this through President Trump yet again, he once again can’t bring back manufacturing jobs. They’re thankfully gone. But in erecting tariff barriers, Trump can slow the natural evolution of cities made up of people constantly working to put the past into the past. Which means Trump can slow progress with tariffs, but that’s the extent of it.
As for the jobs he promises to bring back, we’re all lucky he can’t do what he promises to. As post-WWII Germany and Japan attest, countries are rebuilt by enterprising people. Unless they leave. Aliquippa, Flint and Thurmond exist as monuments to what happens when people exit the past. Yes, the return of manufacturing jobs is more economically crippling than any bomb.
