Have jobs been lost to outsourcing? Sure. But far more jobs have been lost to automation and the elimination of obsolete industries. While companies might have avoided investing in automation through the use of cheap labor in other countries, there is little doubt that will change if they re-shore.
The age of the mega corp killed all of that stuff. NYC had a few thousand factories, all crushed by bigger, subsidized by tax policy competitors in the US south and then offshored.
And we didn't pay for re-skilling, re-training, re-education. We didn't give them welfare benefits to hold over while they learned these new things. We did near nothing, and expected these areas simply to pick themselves back up organically.
Of course that failed. When you do little to nothing, you get little to nothing in return.
Tariffs and manufacturing aren't going to solve this fundamental problem, which is as industry demands shift they externalize the cost whenever possible, which leaves workers, cities and states with a poor deal. If you instead plan around the fact you can't micro manage the economy, but you can setup a meaningful floor that catches people when industry shifts and allows them to invest in themselves - without fear of losing their livelihood - to take advantage of the next opportunities or better yet, create new ones - you wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Tariffs won't help. Bringing manufacturing - in whatever capacity does get brought back, it remains to be seen if this will even happen - won't help alleviate this in any meaningful way.
On top of all this, the tariffs are here, and there is little plan beyond simply implementing them and...waiting for industry to magically start manufacturing in the US again? What is the actual plan here?
I frankly can't understand the undeserved optimism. If we wanted to make things better for formerly industrial cities, we should have invested in them and their citizenry decades ago. We failed to do this meaningfully. Thats the real problem, and they aren't fixing that problem at all
In a healthy free market, companies go bust. It just happens: better competitors show up, services or goods aren't needed, plans don't pan out. But we've created a system that keeps companies afloat ala Weekend at Bernie's, instead of what people actually want: keep families afloat.
This was the old "learn to code" moment. You are going to take a 50 year old auto worker with a high school degree and train them to do what? We have tried it, we have invested in it, is just doesn't work well.
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
You are better off using trade policy to at least slow down offshoring to give people a chance to move, retrain, retire if they are close.