Trump and his billionaire toadies like Howard Lutnik and Scott Bessent are peddling a dangerous lie to working-class Americans. They’re strutting around claiming their tariffs will bring back “good paying jobs” with “great benefits,” while actively undermining the very thing that made manufacturing jobs valuable to working people in the first place: unions.
Let’s be crystal clear about what’s really happening: Without strong unions, bringing manufacturing back to America will simply create more sweatshop opportunities where desperate workers earn between $7.25 and $15 an hour with zero benefits and zero security.
The only reason manufacturing jobs like my father had at a tool-and-die shop in the 1960s paid well enough to catapult a single-wage-earner family into the middle class was because they had a union — the Machinists’ Union, in my dad’s case — fighting relentlessly for their rights and dignity.
My father’s union job meant we owned a modest home, had reliable healthcare, and could attend college without crushing debt. The manufacturing jobs Trump promises? Starvation wages without healthcare while corporate profits soar and executives buy their third megayacht.
The proof of their deception is written all over their actions: They’re already reconfiguring the Labor Department into an anti-worker weapon designed to crush any further unionization in America.
Joe Biden was also working to revive American manufacturing — with actual success — but he made it absolutely clear that companies benefiting from his Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act should welcome unions in exchange for government support.
Trump and his GOP enablers want the opposite: docile workers grateful for poverty wages.
While Republicans babble endlessly about “job creators,” they fundamentally misunderstand — or deliberately obscure — how a nation’s true wealth is actually generated.
It’s not through Wall Street speculation or billionaire tax breaks. It’s through making things of value; the exact activity their donor class has eagerly shipped overseas for decades while pocketing the difference.
There’s a profound economic reason to bring manufacturing home that Adam Smith laid out in 1776 and Alexander Hamilton amplified in 1791 when he presented his vision for turning America into a manufacturing powerhouse. It’s the fundamental principle behind Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations” that I explain in detail in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America.
A tree limb lying on the forest floor has zero economic value. But apply human labor by whittling it into an axe handle, and you’ve created something valuable. That “added value” — the result of applying human (or machine) labor to raw materials — is wealth added to the nation, often lasting for generations if the product endures. Axes made in the 17th century are still being sold in America; manufacturing can produce wealth that truly lasts generations.
Manufacturing, in other words, is the only true way a country becomes wealthier. It’s why China transformed from the impoverished nation I witnessed firsthand when I lived and studied there in 1986 to the economic juggernaut it is today. It’s why Japan and South Korea emerged from the devastation of war to become industrial powerhouses within decades.
This is not generally true, by the way, of a service economy, the system that Reagan and Clinton told us would give us “clean jobs” as America abandoned manufacturing in the 1980-2000s era.
If I give you a $50 haircut and you give me a $50 massage — a service economy — we’ve merely shuffled money around while the nation’s overall wealth remains unchanged. But build a factory producing solar panels, and you’ve created something from raw materials that generates power for decades: that’s real wealth that didn’t exist before.
Republicans used to understand this basic economic principle before they sold their souls to Wall Street speculators and foreign dictators who shower them with “investments.”
Service-only economies don’t generate wealth; they just recirculate existing money. This fundamental truth is the strongest argument for rebuilding American manufacturing capacity, yet it’s one that economists and political commentators almost never mention. Trump certainly doesn’t grasp it — or care — as he hawks Chinese-made MAGA hats while pretending to champion American workers.
The hypocrisy is staggering. This is the same Donald Trump whose branded clothing lines were manufactured in China, Mexico, and Bangladesh. The same Republican Party that pushed “free trade” deals for decades that gutted American manufacturing communities. Now they’re suddenly tariff champions? Please.
So yes, let’s use thoughtfully designed tariffs and other trade policies to bring manufacturing back to our shores. Let Congress debate and pass these measures with 3- to 10-year phase-in periods so manufacturers can plan their transition to American production without the chaos of Trump changing his mind every time some foreign dictator slips another million into his back pocket.
But don’t be fooled for one second: the GOP’s plan to resurrect American manufacturing while continuing their war on unions is nothing but a cynical ploy to create an army of desperate, low-wage workers with no power to demand their fair share.
It’s not “Making America Great Again” — it’s making America into exactly what their corporate donors have always wanted: a docile workforce with no voice, no protections, and nowhere else to go.
We need manufacturing AND unions. Anything less is just another con job from the party that’s perfected the art of getting working class Americans to vote against their own economic interests.