This is valid point but there is a catch.
Economic growth and progress happens when countries are developing and moving up in the value chain. Developed economies are constantly moving towards high-tech and less labor incentive work. China is still industrial economy. US has moved into postindustrial economy. US manufacturing will decline despite trade wars. Manufacturing work will decline even more than GDP share of manufacturing.
When low productivity work (milk, garment, furniture workers) moves to China it allows redirecting investments and resources to higher value added products.
If these low productivity workers would be zombie/robots, companies would just write them off and recycle them into trash and compost - or sell them to China. But they are citizens and they vote. In other words, we have a political problem.
Possible solutions:
* Use tariffs to protect workers in low productivity work. This moves economic resources in the US to less competitive industries. Over decades, US falls behind other developed countries because it wants to protect industries that developing countries have.
* Solve the actual political problem directly. US citizens not earning living wages with skills they have.
If you sold 1GB of RAM for $10 two years ago, and you sold 2GB of RAM for $10 this year, that's the normal state of the computer market. I don't think it's really equivalent to selling twice as many tons of steel or wheat for half the price.
0: https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-... 1: https://www.theatlas.com/charts/BJh4B5_TG
A large portion of a goods value, especially for consumer goods, is perceived value.
Is this really true?
Does having industries like furniture-making really make it so we don't have Google?
When people start to flood from rich countries to poor countries to improve their quality of life, abstraction has served it's purpose.
The difference between MRI machine and metal press is very concrete.
>The power of the new China lobby was evident in Beijing last March 7, when more than 100 representatives of major U.S. firms held their annual conference under the auspices of the U.S.-China Business Council. Delivering his first major speech since taking office just weeks before, U.S. Ambassador James Sasser told them that the Clinton administration was counting on aggressive pressure from business to secure renewal of MFN status for China.
>Of course, the Fortune 500 companies that comprise the U.S.-China Business Council—led by Boeing, Motorola, Caterpillar, AT&T, and the American International Group (AIG)—hardly needed Sasser's encouragement...
>Industry's real interest in China is its direct investment there (more than $25 billion), and its revenue from exporting such Chinese-made goods as electrical machinery, clothing, textiles, shoes, and toys back to the states. These exports are highly profitable for the companies, but they undercut labor's bargaining hand—and frequently take away jobs—in the United States, even as they provide a cheap source of goods.
http://prospect.org/article/new-china-lobby
I'm afraid that this has always been about rearranging our trade policy so that we enrich the few at the expense of the many inside our nation.
But.. people did change jobs? Unemployment is at an all-time low and goods and services are very cheap. Housing is not cheap, but that's a function of the wage rate (which could be argued is a function of housing costs).
Just because there are more services industry jobs and less manufacturing does not mean that 'blue collar America' is forgotten -- it's just changed identities.
Everyone benefits from global trade because the terms of trade should always benefit both parties.
Unemployment is low, precarity is high. Wall Street bitches about the primacy of stability and predictability all the time, but doesn't apply the same principle to working- and middle-class families' employment.
In percentage terms in the US, several big-ticket items in a working or middle-class family's budget are not cheap at all. You named housing, but it really is real property (the dirt), which makes this an even worse problem than expensive buildings. There are any number of alternative structure designs that can work around expensive buildings, and many DIY'able as well. You can't get around expensive-ass dirt, no matter how much "up by your own bootstraps", creative, or determined you get, and dirt even in "flyover country" is expensive for these kinds of budgets, especially so considering the kinds of wages they can get in those areas of the country.
Healthcare isn't cheap. Education isn't cheap. Insurance isn't cheap. Internet isn't cheap. Leisure time isn't cheap.
In young Millenial, working- or middle-class families, these budget categories combined tally into the 70%+ range of take-home, after-tax income. Sure, computers are hedonically cheap. Packaged, sub-standard nutrition food is cheap. Externality-reliant-business-models spewing forth piles of throwaway junk appliances, one-time-use-plastic, etc. are cheap.
Not all categories are weighted the same in quality of life, don't fall for the economic canard that just because a number of categories are dirt cheap (and many of them are externality- or outright subsidy-dependent to make them cheap), that those people standing closer to the left-hand side of the bell curve are getting a fair shake. They aren't, they haven't for the past 40 years, and just because they can't figure out the relationship between interest rates and bonds, or use Lexis-Nexis, or read an actuarial table, or navigate a bureaucracy, or extrapolate the possible implications of policy decisions decades into the future, or write a loop, doesn't mean it's open season on their human dignity or they're "muppets".
These statistics suggest that unemployment is at 25%: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...
This article explains some concerns about the manner in which the rate is calculated: https://qz.com/877432/the-us-unemployment-rate-measure-is-de...
"Yet to leave this group out significantly underestimates employment issues in the US. For example, the unemployment rate completely ignores the nearly 600,000 “discouraged workers” who say they are no longer looking because they don’t think they can find a job. It disregards the many students who would like a part-time job but have given up looking, and caretakers who would take a job if the compensation was high enough."
Also, most service sector jobs don’t afford you a mortgage and other lower middle class living. Most service sector workers struggle to get by, compared to your blue collar worker of yesteryear. Those people could afford a mortgage, raise three kids and send the off to state school. That ain’t happening no more.
But it is completely false as this graph shows: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/u-3-unemployment-rate-was-... Empirical data suggests that U6 is almost linearly dependent on U3, meaning that, indeed, the "real" unemployment in the US is record low.
Yes, service jobs doesn't pay well. That is perhaps related to decades of union busting and resistance against raising minimum wages?
Moreover, he’s the president of the American people, not the President Of The World. He and every president has a sacred responsibility to look after his/her citizens.
"He does badmouth _illegal_ immigrants, true"
So which is it?
It really doesn't matter though, as the point is that he is putting the blame on others (immigrants, other countries and their trade practices, etc.). Whether the immigrants are "illegal" or not doesn't matter in this context: it's an out group that grievances can be directed towards.
I'd be remiss if I didn't leave this here:
“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame,” Trump said. “I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad,” he continued. “I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/07/13/t...
Few people would argue against legal immigration ala Canada, Australia, even Brazil or Mexico. They all have pretty reasonable requirements to becoming a legal resident.
Could you please point to any of them speaking positively about illegal immigration, vs. speaking against Trump’s racism and practices such as separating young children from their parents at the border?
Jerry Brown trying to block legal Vietnamese immigrants in 75 : https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-jerry-brown-tried-to-keep-...
Feinstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvRZdNoHEf8
Obama as well, but this is enough to prove the point.
So how can illegal immigration be both a cause celebre of the left, and something that the left condemns?
Have we misunderstood each other?
I hear this all the time when it comes to rebutting criticism of Trump. It's interesting how such a terrible president who made such awful deals has so much in common with Trump...
They were never "forgotten and left behind", they signaled to the elites that they were happy to vote against their economic interests for whatever the culture war issue of the day is.
When you actually look at the data it tracks with another development, one often ignored (as you yourself did here): the decline of union participation and activism.
I distinctly remember a debate that occurred for a time under GWB around "values voters", with "the left" (broadly and generally speaking) asking why Americans voted against their economic interests in favor of "moral values" and "the right" (again broadly and generally speaking) arguing that for some "moral values" hold more weight than economic interests.
I mention this because there is a deliberate attempt to remove responsibility of blue collar workers from their plight. All those guys you mentioned? Yea, they were elected. GHWB on the strength of being Reagan's VP, Clinton was re-elected after NAFTA and his VP Gore won the popular vote, GWB won in 2004 on the strength of "values voters", etc.
They all thought they knew better and could bring China in line.
After Clinton, GWB didn’t even try. He was too distracted by bin Laden. Obama was trying to make nice to the rest of the world during his first term, then got embroiled with the unrest he started in the ME. They had all forgotten about blue collar America. They all thought people would change jobs and these jobs would offer a good living to blue collar workers.
Surprise! It doesn’t work that way. Sure your ivy leaguers got nice cushy advisory jobs and consultancy jobs and got to talk about their adventures diring their two year China stint.
All the whole mill workers, garment workers, furniture workers, tools workers were forgotten and left behind.
Now, while inelegantly, someone is finally recognizing the grievance. It’s about time. It’s a shame it’s taken 20 years.