The Problem With “What About The Workers?!”
A response to an argument based on feels not facts
In response to the President’s decision to drive the economy into a wall by levying extreme tariffs on essentially the rest of the world, the most common response from Trump apologists is that this is necessary for the benefit of American “workers.” I wanted to take moment to examine this argument.
Let’s start by addressing an important question: who are we talking about when we talk about “workers.” My guess is that we’re not talking about everyone who works. For example, in the last few days the person who has been pushing this argument was, a little over two months ago, celebrating the mass lay-off of Federal Workers. Further, they argued for the necessity of those lay-offs based on their own proclaimed experience of turning around “failing” businesses by… laying off workers.
I realize this feels like narrow casting, but it’s necessary in this case to unpack the shaky ground this argument is being made on. Clearly “workers” doesn’t mean everyone who works. Or even everyone who works more entry-level or lower-paid, frontline positions, which many of those government jobs were. Nor, I suspect, are they thinking about the tariffs’ impact on current service-based workers. In fact, while not all service jobs are retail, retail work remains the largest employment sector in the country today, and these tariffs will hit that sector HARD (and most likely lead to a workforce contraction) . So clearly these folks are not thinking about “retail workers.”
I guess that they are mainly thinking about manufacturing jobs. That focus on manufacturing workers as the primary workers we should be thinking of seems supported by a x/eet from another Pro-Trump account:
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson used this as a jumping-off point for a series of X/eets that pointed out the problem with this thinking. For ease of reading, I’ll quote them instead of directly embedding the long X/eets:
This seems to be a photo of an abandoned plant owned by Packard Auto, a failed 20th c car maker that over-expanded in the 1940s and got out-competed by the Big Three. Guy who voted in 2024 to go back in time and fix the business decisions of an also-ran mid-century auto maker
It’s a little mean to narrowly claim that the tariffs are designed to travel back in time and change the business decisions of 1940s Packard Auto execs. But I think it’s useful to be clear about what exactly these tariffs are supposed to do, and where they’re supposed to do it.
If folks are mad about de-industrialization, we need a bigger framework to consider why, for example, even countries like Germany that ran trade surpluses also saw declining manufacturing share of the labor force. If folks are mad about photos of abandoned plants, it worthwhile to ask why THAT PLANT was abandoned.
Using de-industialization porn from the 1950s to run Econ policy in the 2020s is … I’m sorry to say, more than mildly insane. [source]
It is without a doubt a fact that we have seen a fall-off in manufacturing via off-shoring and for other global trade reasons. That has devastated communities. I don’t question that as all. And as someone who has organized workers in the recent past, I care about what happens to American workers in all sorts of roles. I also care what happens to them while they are out of work (which is another reason why I am so concerned for the immediate future, given the Trump administration’s attack on our social safety net from all sides).
At the same time, the idea that these tariffs are a strategy to help “American workers” moving forward is simply not based on any grounded facts. First, if it were, the President’s supporters could actually present coherent arguments about how the tariffs will help (or even what the tariffs are supposed to do). Are they to solve our debt? Or bring manufacturing back home? Or get better trade agreements? No one can tell.
Let’s assume that they are to bring manufacturing back home. First, there is the question of whether or not that is even possible. Again, I’ll turn to a X/eet from Spencer Hakimian, Founder of Tolou Capital Management.
Hey Cult Boys, I got another complicated math question for you.
Please see if you can help me figure it out. I just can’t seem to.
It costs $2 to make a t shirt in Vietnam. It costs $20 to make that same t shirt in West Virginia. After you tariff Walmart 50%, and make that t shirt cost $3 in Vietnam.
Does Walmart:
A) Continue using the Vietnamese factory
B) Switch to West Virginia’s factoryPlease help.
I would welcome any Trump apologist with business experience to make the argument for “B”–especially if said WV factory doesn’t already exist. It would be great for them include why companies would make that type of capital investment given the deeply unstable policy landscape we are currently facing.
Here’s the thing, I’d also love for them to explain how option “B” creates manufacturing jobs at scale. Even the President’s own Secretary of Commerce has highlighted the flaw with that:
Robotics and other forms of manufacturing automation are going to replace much of the hand-labor that was the hallmark of mid-century manufacturing. Manufacturing could return to the US, even at scale, but that doesn’t mean that the same scale of manufacturing jobs will.
For a truly fascinating deep dive into this I recommend this X/itter thread on “Lights-out factories”–manufacturing facilities with so few people, they keep the lights off–by journalist Charles Fishman. Not only do lights-out factories exist within the US, they are increasingly being built around the world–including in Vietnam and other places to make those $3 t-shirts. I suspect that even the president’s apologists will be forced to admit that the future of American manufacturing is a move towards lights-out facilities–especially for lower-cost consumer goods.
Nowhere in Trump’s plan or his apologists’ hot takes has this question about where manufacturing jobs at scale will come from been addressed. Yes, they tell us to “think about the workers,” but that’s an emotional appeal to the past, versus a fact-based argument or strategy for the future.
One final note on this: the “what about the workers” emotional appeal is being used to attack people they see as their political enemies. Even worse, those political enemies make the apologists uncomfortable by pointing out facts they can’t address on substance.
So, I’m going to pile one last uncomfortable fact on that heap: most of those apologists were for off-shoring and so-called efficiency-based layoffs before they were against them.
I grew up in a household in the eighties and early nineties where conservative talk radio was always on. So I remember what folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bob Grant were saying about American manufacturing then. The main thrust was “nobody was buying American because other countries made better products–especially cars–better, faster, and cheaper.” And whose fault was that? American workers… the same workers we’re supposed to care about now. Tell me if this type of tough-love thinking sounds familiar:
“We talk about the value of hard work, but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance.”
That BTW, wasn’t even from Limbaugh or a modern talker like Michael (Weiner) Savage–it was VP J. D. Vance writing in Hillbilly Elegy. He held this position for the entirety of the first Trump administration.
However, now positions have shifted, and people who have laid off workers in the past in the name of turning around failing businesses, suddenly believe that manufacture can come back home and we should suddenly care about “the workers” (though given those same people’s focus on cutting debt while preserving tax cuts that are good for them are fine with regressive taxes on American Workers via tariffs and cutting the social safety net for the former workers who currently can’t find the jobs that the apologist remind us don’t exist).
One more note on Conservative Media–which I know many of Trump’s fiecest apologists marinate in–during the 80’s and 90’s at the very least, one of the most consistent mantras of Limbaugh and others were that “We have the ‘facts’ and Democrats/Libs have the “feels.” The utterly factless and feel-based defenses to the tariffs (especially from people who claim to understand business and manufacturing) is a prime example of how either things have flipped or perhaps this was a fig-leaf from the start to protect against cognitive dissonance.
Every conservative I’ve ever met regarded himself as a hard-headed realist. And every one of them believed blatant nonsense.
Also, too, any Republican concern for “workers” is like their concern for the deficit, purely rhetorical.
What’s more, even if you argue “reshoring” production is a good thing, even if it doesn’t mean many jobs, need to deal with the problem of inefficiency:
The tariff-inflated domestic price is diverting capital, plant, land, and highly skilled labour away from OTHER industries which ARE internationally competitive, and driving up their cost, and making them less competitive.
It’s just basic market economics.
Of course, the unrestrained market is NOT always “right”: and that is where government, competition law, consumer protection regulations, unions etc play their part.
Or some genuine “strategic military” imperatives.
But sate supervised free-markets seem a lot more likely to engender prosperity than a mix of autarky, autocracy, and anarchy.
(Especially as implemented by dim interns with AI assistance)
Global economics (and economics in general), like foreign policy and the nuanced relevance of “soft power” is so far beyond the understanding and unfortunately the general education of the average voter.
That’s why they will offer up and be persuaded by analogies to shuttered Packard factories. Or transgender bathrooms.
Give them the choice of maintaining USD dominance as reserve currency verses rescuing Confederate monuments from “woke” and 50% pick the latter.
Information, information, everywhere! Nor a drop of any discernment to drink!
Our “albatross.”
@JohnSF:
Completely agree, especially with this:
In fact that nuance has been pointed out by economists going all the way back to Adam Smith (and I’m sure before him as well).
This is not an all-or-nothing situation. Strategic tariffs and other sanctions are a tool (in fact, one of the things that “What About CHINA” Trump apologists don’t mention is that the Biden Administration kept most (if not all) of the first Trump administration’s China sanctions and tariffs in place).
Likewise, I’m sure that “what about the workers” Trump apologists will blame trade unions for offshoring. And without a doubt the organized labor movement has at times contributed to its mess.
It’s also worth noting that for manufacturing workers (since those seem to be the only workers who count) their loss of life stability has been mirrored by a loss of union power. Granted that might be more of a correlation than causation issue.
Further, I find it a little challenging to be told to “think about the workers” by supporters of an administration actively working to disassemble the NLRB (and did a lot of damage to the NLRB and workers’ ability to organize during the first Trump Administration).
I completely agree that the arguments for/against workers and manufacturing are simply responses to feed the narrative of the moment. What I can’t figure out is the true underlying story for those who want these tariffs. What do they actually believe this is accomplishing, in their heart of hearts? I’m sure there’s a strong greed component here, but I can’t figure out how that works.
@Kristina Stierholz:
100% agree with this point. No one, including the White House, seems to be in agreement on this. Worst still, depending on who you talk to in the White House and when you talk to them, there are multiple suggestions.
BTW, this also is why Apologists have to fall back on “CHINA” or “WHAT ABOUT THE WORKERS”–they can’t even articulate a coherent strategy. Nor can they point to any writers or articles from even semi-reputable publications that make a coherent argument. Forget the Wall Street Journal, last I checked the lost Zero Hedge. What’s worse for them, the only people advancing positive arguments for this are the dumbest of the dumb political commenters like Jessie Waters and Sean Hannity… and those are all feels based arguments.
Matt, Matt, Matt,
You just don’t understand…
It is simple: this is just applying early baby-boomer solutions to modern day problems.
The solution is to just eliminate ALL modern day problems. Trump was elected because MAGA gets that “Father Knows Best” vibe, and that makes them feel good.
MAGA wants that 1950’s feel again, with the majority of America’s men going off to the factory with a lunch pail, and being rewarded with a shorter life.
Before all the modern problems.
Before women spoke in public. Before unions, Before bla…
Well, just before.
That is the vision.
It’s the march to work of the masses in Metropolis (1927). But with far less joy.
I remember having a small workplace reunion lunch once 10 plus years ago. We had a conversation about offshoring. The two conservatives were upset about it. The two of us more liberal (all programmers/engineers, by the way) said, “yeah, it’s a problem, but digging a moat around America isn’t going to fix it.” They had no answer.
I think that when workers say that things were better once upon a time, they are right. Things were better for them. I do not think it is likely that tariffs will bring back those times. The big question in my mind is what sort of rhetoric, argument, plan, politics, is going to connect with enough of them to get them to look forward, not back.
Future-orientation would be so much more helpful.
@Kristina Stierholz:
Or, a cohort of “anti-globalist” ideologues who have captured the Presidency, seek disengagement from the world’s influence in general, and the liberal democracies of Europe, Canada etc. in particular.
The goal is consolidation of power and concentration of wealth. Such disengagement aligns with all of the other destruction they wreak upon our judicial system and processes of democratic representation. It’s no mystery in light of Project 2025 and a decade of blather from the likes of Steve Bannon.
Just to add more context, not only were conservatives attacking American workers for being too lazy or greedy, they very much supported American companies moving offshore so that they could maintain profits. Clinton may have signed the papers but Gingrich and co were the driving force. This shows in the tax cuts they received. The 2017 (Trump) TCJA was supposed to help return money to the US and provide some tax revenue. In spite of so many companies moving facilities and production overseas we did not an increase in revenue from this as provisions were made so that tax liability was reduced. IOW, you moved your company, made more profits and paid less in taxes.
It’s also notable, I believe, that if you look at the number of manufacturing jobs at the start of the Clinton years and the end they are almost the same. It was during the Bush years that we saw the big outflow of jobs to China. That was cheered on by the pro-business Republicans. (As an aside, there is a significant anti-business element in the right wing now.)
Last of all, if the goal was truly to get everyone to get rid of their tariffs I could support an effort at doing that. To be clear, an intelligent well constructed effort. It would be better if no one had tariffs. However, looking at the metrics Trump’s team claims to be using they are really looking at trade deficits. If we need high tariffs so that our companies can compete how would we compete if no one had tariffs? If we can compete then we should go ahead and do so.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2023/10/12/did-tcja-increase-revenue-on-us-corporation-foreign-income
Steve
I like to watch shows like “How It’s Made” and “Food Factory,” which show how various things are manufactured. About 95% of the factories shown are in the US or Canada. This gives one the impression there’s plenty of manufacturing left in these countries. Checking the numbers for manufacturing output bears this out, though manufacturing commands a lower share of GDP than it used to.
One thing noticeable from these shows is how automated everything is, with machine doing most of the work. Most employees one sees working do rather simple things, like move stuff from one machine to another, wrap or pack products, drive pallets from line to warehouse, etc. Now an then some assemble parts in casings, or operate older machines not fully automated.
Where you do see skilled work is in artisanal products, usually luxury, like blown glass, lithographs, and the like. there’s some in mass produced decorative items, like ceramic tiles. And some more in assembling things like footballs and shoes.
But the trend towards, as noted in the blog post, “lights-out factories” is unmistakable.
There is no plan.
There is no strategy.
There is no goal.
There’s just a fat old man, suffering from dementia, who has surrounded himself with sycophants. Yes-men with neither the spine nor the intelligence to tell the old man that he’s a fool.
In a matter of two months the worlds security structure, its economic structure, and our own Constitution, have been thrown into crisis. And to what end no one can explain.
Yet the biggest tragedy in all of this is that, given this golden opportunity to attack the Doughboy’s incompetence, the Dems are saddled with the impotence that is Chuck Schumer.
Peter Zeihan – who is pretty on-point most of the time – points out that in order to re-industrialize we need a bunch of processed materials we don’t have nearly enough of. Steel, aluminum, processed Lithium. Given the tariffs and sanctions on China they are effectively off the board. So where do we get the stuff we need? We don’t, because we’re sanctioning everyone else, too.
My additional point: China is in a very bad position economically. Aging population, a property sector that’s a disaster, and now this. If I were Xi, I’d take Taiwan right now. There’s nothing to be lost economically, and he doesn’t need to wait to build the whole invasion fleet. He can blockade the island, and use pinprick drone and missile attacks to bring down the Taiwanese government. Then, in addition to the processed materials we need, he’ll also control virtually all the high end chips. I do not believe Trump would risk a real war. He’s a bomb-the-weak guy, he’s not FDR.
His excuse for caving to China will be: Biden, of course. If the PRC has TSMC, we either drop tariffs and sanctions, or fall farther behind technologically.
@Michael Reynolds:
imho Xi might have planned on taking Taiwan.
But now, when Trump is wrecking US alliances in Asia, and going to produce an Asian-centric trading system in reaction to tariff war?
Why take the risk, when he can just sit back and wait for the victory to fall into his lap in a few years?
@Michael Reynolds:
@JohnSF:
What China wants, at minimum, is to push the US away from its doorstep. Due to Trump he has that opportunity without firing a shot. He needs to convince the So. Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos and Australians, that if they deny the US forward bases in their countries, China won’t encroach on them and offer them defense assistance. A huge lift yes, but if successful…
@JohnSF:
It comes down to wether China sees their picture improving. I don’t know what they believe, but the reality is that their economy is already in the toilet, and all the tariffs are going to do severe damage. The era of rising China is over. From here on its a slow descent relative to the US.
I’m particularly recalling the US embargo of oil to Japan. The Japanese knew, with Soviets on the border of China, and the US rapidly re-arming, it was then or never. Xi has sworn to take Taiwan. Is this is now or never? Why not take the shot given that they don’t have to fear economic retaliation? They’ve been preemptively retaliated against.
Two very different countries, very different leadership structures, but sometimes when countries get to that now or never point, they choose now. But obviously all speculation.
To @Sleeping Dog: point, who could we count on even if Trump decides to fight? We just shit all over South Korea and Japan and we are clearly unreliable allies. Time to get along with China? If I’m sitting in Seoul or Tokyo, why should I risk anything at all to help an unstable and disloyal US? If we don’t have the full and enthusiastic support of SK and Japan, we don’t have the means to fight China. Not from Guam. And carriers will have to stand so far off that their planes will have limited reach.
@Kristina Stierholz:
I offer you the most terrifying explanation: they actually believe their own shit.
Trump, Musk and that whole top level of decision makers have something in common: they were born into wealth and stumbled into more wealth. They started with enough money and opportunities that funding N different things was bound to succeed in at least a few cases, so long as they don’t get too involved and screw things up.
And they believe they succeeded by good breeding, good ideas and just being better.
These aren’t narrow geniuses or stupid-smart people or anything like that… these people are (and I cannot stress this enough) fucking morons.
And the next level down in the decision making hierarchy are people who don’t care. They’re just selling to the very wealthy fucking morons. What are they selling? Agreement and validation. Sometimes to advance their own goals, other times just for money.
And then another layer of people who want power, but don’t care what they do with it.
But it all comes down to very stupid people born into positions of wealth, set up to succeed despite their best efforts to the contrary, believing that they can see what no one else can.
There were a couple articles recently about Trump being furious that Putin wasn’t settling the Ukraine war. That he was ranting about this in the White House, in between his other rants. That he genuinely believes he is a great peacemaker with the full force of the world’s only superpower and that no one can stand up to him. I find that far more believable that the “he’s working for the Russians” theories.
(Although, no tariffs are being placed on Russia, so … maybe)
Ever since voodoo economics were invented by the Republicans in the 70’s (cut taxes to raise revenues which is like saying water is dry), they have lived in an alternate universe, enriching themselves while immiserating everybody else, running up the debt and starving the government of the ability to develop a cogent industrial policy. One of the ironies of GOP policy is that it incentivized outsourcing and to be clear, we are not done, today the Senate is considering adding another half trillion dollar to the yearly deficit on top of the two trillion we already have. But there is no policy behind his, it is just cash grab, like a jewelry thief breaking the window and taking the watches. On top of this, we have a tariff regime that’s it is just to inane to beggar description. When the layoffs begin, and the government safety net is tested driving deficits even higher, mind you with a weakening dollar, well I can see is a downward spiral. Let’s be clear, Republicans broke America.
@Michael Reynolds:
I would have tended to agree with you, until Trump embarked on screwing the entire kennels.
If Xi is sensible enough to move China away from a policy of arrogantly picking quarrels with neighbours, who must be questioning the reliability of US guarantees, and worried about their economies, he has at least three years to undermine the US position before moving.
Also, the Chinese economic issues may have resolutions now opening up: moving away from being primarily export led and domestic capital intensive, to moving up the production/service levels, providing capital to countries starved of dollar earnings, boosting domestic consumption to provide a greater goods market to the same.
Trump has imuho opened a massive window of opportunity to Beijing.
The question is, can Xi see it and seize it?
Especially as boosting domestic consumption seem to make the Party itch: loss of relative economic privilege for the party-connected, and the problems of managing a more generally prosperous society.
If I were Xi, I’d wait and use the economic opportunity.
Especially, if Trump (and Vance) continues to piss of the Europeans at every opportunity, that opens up a major chance for a renversement des alliances.
As long as he’s willing to screw over Russia, which I suspect would not trouble him one teensy little bit, given the stakes.
@Gustopher:
What do we import from Russia? Serious question. I really have no idea and am too lazy to ask Bing.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Fertilisers are the big one, iirc,
Also, gold and silver, gems, raw chemicals, wood/wood products.
For decades, devotion to Hayekian economics was bedrock conservative ideology. Prices were signals that allowed competitive free markets to clear with maximum economic efficiency. Interference with these markets was the start of the ‘Road to Serfdom’.
I don’t criticise MAGA cultists for abandoning their long-cherished beliefs. But I do take offence when they lie about what they were, just as I despise them for claiming they never supported the Iraq invasion or the occupation of Afghanistan.