The Trump administration has a draconian vision to "bring back serfdom" for the American people in enacting its controversial tariff regime against the entire rest of the world, Malcolm Ferguson wrote in a scathing analysis for The New Republic published on Tuesday.
Specifically, Ferguson wrote, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking on MSNBC, laid out a dream of Americans trapped forever in the manufacturing industry, working in the same factories their parents and grandparents did.
“This is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here," said Lutnick. "You know, we let the auto plants go overseas. Right now you should see an auto plant, it’s highly automated but the people — the four, five thousand people who work there — they are trained to take care of those robotic arms, they are trained to keep the air conditioning system.”
ALSO READ: 'Never so scared': Furious pastor berates cops after witnessing tasing of MTG constituent
"There’s nothing wrong with working in a factory, on its face," wrote Ferguson. "But Lutnick, the son of a college professor and the grandson of a dry-cleaning store owner, is suggesting that millions of people ought to commit to a generational lack of upward mobility under the guise of creating a new class of American labor. What Lutnick is so enthusiastically describing — being bound to the same job in the same industry for decades and decades — is serfdom. And that serfdom won’t even be widely available as automation takes over and the only job left is to watch the robots and make sure they don’t overheat."
In short, he concluded, "Howard Lutnick and Donald Trump view the domestic workforce as a homogenous, voiceless mass happy to live in the dreary mediocrity they’re forced into."
Even as the Trump administration preaches the virtues of factory work, it has also slashed funding to vital programs that support American factories, like the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that offers expert advice to smaller manufacturing operations.