Perhaps it was? unreasonable to expect reason and logic to prevail before the election, but now we must insist on making sense.
The loss of manufacturing jobs that hollowed out the working class is not primarily the result of globalization and trade. Manufacturing jobs have indeed been lost, and they will not come back because they cannot come back.
No problem can be misdiagnosed and then solved, yet that is precisely what we have tried to do. Manufacturing jobs have not been lost due to bad trade deals; they have been eliminated by technological advance. One reliable study estimates that 80 to 85% of the loss in manufacturing jobs is due to what used to be called "automation."
It simply does not take as many workers to make things any more. For the less than 20% of job losses caused by wage differentials, protectionism and tariffs are not the answer. We must be blunt. Tariffs just compel one group of Americans -- often those who can least afford it -- to subsidize the wages of other Americans.
The truly compassionate, and truly efficient, policy is to invest in human capital. That is “Economicspeak” for training dislocated fellow citizens to do new, more? productive work. There is good work to be done, and we have good workers to do it if we would only get serious and offer them genuine aid.
I'm Bob Evans, and that is my perspective.
