> Why are manufacturing jobs special?

Because you need manufacturing to win wars, or to be seen by outside great powers that you're in a position of winning wars. You're not winning wars based on git commit messages, but based on the steel any one country is able to produce at a certain moment in time (and to transform it into tanks/armoured vehicles and artillery shells).

That is manufacturing capacity, not jobs. A factory of ten people and a few hundred robots is fine. Other types of manufacturing like chips, aerospace and medical equipment are high value and low workforce.

Tariffs and industrial policy may increase the US' manufacturing capacity, but don't expect to see many manufacturing jobs from it.

aerospace in the US is very much NOT low workforce. It's quite the opposite. One of the highest employers of "traditional" manufacturing in some ways. I think you also underestimate how many employees are required for medical equipment manufacturing as well.

> A factory of ten people and a few hundred robots is fine

Don't think that that is true when it comes to the steel industry when you include all the verticals, i.e. mineral extraction + transportation of said minerals + energy production + transportation of said energy. You need qualified people for that, lots of them. And I've yet to see the steel factory that can be run with only 10, 25 or even 100 people.

Yes, 10 people is a gross exaggeration, but manufacturing output has remained the same while manufacturing employment has fallen over the last few decades. Advanced robotics will continue the trend even if policy pushes manufacturing output up. There is no realistic way to drastically increase manufacturing employment.

I think most MAGAs have this idea that 1) manufacturing is a good paying job and 2) if the US isn't manufacturing stuff, that means China is doing it for us, which will lead to 3) when we decide to go to war with China we will not have the industrial capacity to fight the war. In their world model, the opportunity cost of manufacturing things domestically is not considered, and certainly not the benefits of manufacturing things cheaply abroad and having US workers move up the value chain.

Is there not opportunity cost in both directions? At some point someone needs to have a reason to trade with the us right? Specializing only works when line goes up forever. Heck sometimes line not going up as fast as yesterday is a "crisis".

> Is there not opportunity cost in both directions?

Yes, but there are more working age people outside the US than inside the US, and they’re willing to work for less than people in the US.

> At some point someone needs to have a reason to trade with us right?

We trade plenty of goods, and we trade more services than goods. The people that produce services tend to be college educated, which is negatively correlated with conservatism.

> Specializing only works when line goes up forever.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. If you want cheaper and better quality goods and services, then you need specialization. Every country had some competitive advantage, whether it’s natural resources or specific human capital. When an economic downturn happens, it’s not like that competitive advantage suddenly moves abroad. If it’s cheaper to make things in China, it’s still going to be cheaper during a recession. Raising tariffs on China _maybe_ means companies move manufacturing elsewhere, or _maybe_ means they just pass on costs to consumers. I’m willing to bet money it’s the latter.

How does )3 work in the age of nukes? A shooting war between US-PRC is not something anyone should want.

Don't ask me, I don't believe it will happen :) I think the deterrence to war between nuclear superpowers is the idea that both sides are capable of fighting that war. China and the US both have the industrial capacity to fight against each other, so they will not fight, there's too much to lose. But in MAGA's opinion, the US is losing the industrial capacity to fight said war because US manufacturing is not as common as in the past. What they ignore is that there is a big difference between making cheap steel and making an F-35. Any country can make steel, but only the US can make an F-35.

Your comment perfectly illustrates why communism doesn't work. The one-sentence summary of communism is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" and clearly people's needs grow. I don't know how much longer CCP can still keep communism in its name; how will CCP leaders reconcile that the fact that only by abandoning communism did the country rise?

What happens when every single physical and mental job that could be done by humans is done by AI/robots? Sure, you'll always have people imagining and creating new things, but it doesn't seem wise to tie that to economic compensation when technology reaches a state where every single human being gets to experience an upper-middle class American lifestyle, unconditionally, from birth to death.

Communism, as you described, is an ideal. An horizon, a direction to walk. Therefore, it never was achieved, and it is not expected to be achieved in any short term. So, it does not make sense saying that only after abandoning communism China rose. What they abandonned was a soviet flavour of socialism. Communism never existed (at least not the flavor that you described), but it is still an inspiration and source of values. Perhaps in a far future, with more technology, and without existing an upper class above a lower class this could be possible.