Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

President Trump boasts that his “America First” trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest “deliverable” to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and that renegotiating trade agreements would save the middle class.

What Trump is offering is a palliative that has raised false hopes. He implies that a few good trade deals will refurbish the Rust Belt and restore the good old days of manufacturing. It won’t happen, and to pretend otherwise is a hoax.

Trump campaigned on a false argument that global trade was taking away American jobs. So he killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership his first week in office and is now demanding changes in NAFTA and other trade agreements. He has dressed up a few announcements from jittery U.S. corporations to argue that doomed manufacturing plants are being saved and that jobs are “already starting to pour back.”

Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has inflated this economic nationalism into a full-blown ideology that posits a battle between workers who are being hurt by globalization and an elite that benefits. Referencing the TPP at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Bannon said that Trump “got us out of a trade deal and let our sovereignty come back to ourselves.”

But the numbers show that Trump and Bannon are fighting the wrong battle. Manufacturing employment has indeed declined in America over the past decade, but the major reason is automation, not trade. Robots, not foreign workers, are taking most of the disappearing American jobs. Rather than helping displaced blue-collar workers, Trump’s promises of restoring lost jobs could leave them unprepared for the much bigger wave of automation and job loss that’s ahead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-selling-snake-oil-to-the-rust-belt/2017/02/28/a0074f74-fdf9-11e6-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html?utm_term=.bf0445b878ac&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

[RKP5637]

1. My feeling is this is going to severely backlash when they finally realize he sold them a con job

to get the vote. These people are not innately stupid, just desperate and he sold them a bill of goods and used them.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. And the nafta plants in Mexico are now automated so that

Even if they were to return, they wouldn't employ very many people.

Big steel mills will never return, there is too much competition and not enough demand to make investments like that.

[SharonAnn]

3. The buggy whip manufacturers are going to come roaring back.

[kimbutgar]

4. They are too stupid and brainwashed by hate radio to realize they are being conned

What chump told them during the election is opposite what he is doing. Same old rethug bull$hit.

I have no sympathy for those dupes.

[woodchuck mom]

5. once a con ...

he's always been a con man. His life has left a trail of financial carnage on others, yet he seems to always make out. My husband always quotes Jesus Christ Superstar, "they'll cut you when they find out you've lied." Yes these people are desperate, but their vote for this shill screwed all of us.

[Blue_Tires]

6. k+r

[dalton99a]

7. The only real plan that Trump has is deceit.