I really don’t like Donald Trump. He is a huckster, a liar, and a thief. What really bothers me is his gross misunderstanding of how the global economy works. He sells a lie to his uneducated supporters that if we only built walls, physically and economically, somehow low skill, high paying manufacturing jobs will return to the United States. Speaking as an automation engineer, who works in manufacturing, even if we severed all ties will foreign countries, those jobs are never coming back. Why? Robots and automation. The tremendous increase in worker productivity is due to industrial automation. Yes, some items are more easily assembled by hand, but that will always follow the labor costs. If the walls are put up, that will just drive industry to automate more. Great for me, personally, but unskilled workers are shit out of luck. I have been doing this for almost 20 years, so I am not making this up.
Trump is a salesman selling you a lie, just like Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, etc. He is a millionaire in a baseball cap, catering to the racist masses. Until I see his tax return, I am not calling him a billionaire. He is a sleazy used car salesman, in the worst way, stroking your ego and a pack of lies until he makes the sale.
A recent Wired Article stated my EXACT POINT!
The difference is that even as productivity has grown, automation has shrunk employment in that sector. “The sector has changed pretty dramatically,” Moutray says. “It requires a different type of worker than it used to.” Those workers are now highly trained technologists, doing skilled labor rather than the type of assembly line work that once kept the citizens of Detroit afloat. Ending global trade deals will not revert the industry back to pre-automated days. The robots, so to speak, are out of the bag.