Donald Trump Isn’t Bringing Those Jobs Back To America!

One of the keystones of Donald Trump’s stump speech is how he is going to bring back jobs by being a tough negotiator on trade deals, enacting stiff tariffs on imported goods, and threatening American companies with sanctions if they move jobs out of the country.

But those jobs aren’t coming back…and he’s not going to be able to do anything about it. Why? Because most of those jobs are obsolete and people are being replaced by robots and other automations. Think the robots in auto factories…people don’t weld or paint or insert glass anymore…it’s all done by robots. US automakers could have record years and never reach the employment levels they had 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

Steel isn’t dead in the US…it just requires fewer and fewer workers to get the job done. From an essay by David Brooks in the New York Times (by the way, it would be worth your time to jump down the rabbit hole from this link):

Pittsburgh is a great renaissance story.
Pittsburgh has come so far from the deindustrialization days of the 1970s and 1980s.

But then I drove through the steel mill towns along the Monongahela and other rivers. The storefronts and banks were boarded up, the downtowns deserted. The mills are still operating, but they are so efficient they’re eerily empty of human presence. The towns still have residents, but not much is going on. I drove for miles, unable to find even a diner for lunch.

And even former stoop labor in agriculture is disappearing:

Those great middle class jobs that required manpower and could be had with basic literacy…are gone…they aren’t coming back…and education and continuing education will be the required for even basic jobs. This is an exciting transitional time on the whole…but it continues to be highly disruptive for individuals and families and cities in the meantime. Promising a return to a past that you can’t ever hope to attain is a very cruel promise to make. This isn’t leadership…it is base pandering and I hope people wake up to it sooner rather than later…and this election might just be that wake up call.