Automation and the Future of American Manufacturing

After President Donald Trump threatened to single out Apple with tariffs, he offered remarks to reporters that undercut his case. First he seemed to say this would apply to many iPhone makers, but then reiterated he’d said this straight to Apple CEO Tim Cook, a potentially serious abuse of power. Then Trump said U.S.-manufactured jobs would not result in higher prices due to automation, but this concedes that the manufacturing work he hopes tariffs will create are low-level jobs that might get replaced. And then he all-but-admitted that his threat to get companies to “eat” the cost of his tariffs really could mean potentially higher prices for consumers. All these oddities taken together wreck the fraudulent arguments he’s been making. We talked to Monica Potts, the new class politics reporter at The New Republic, who usefully synthesizes all of it to explain what’s wrong with Trump-MAGA manufacturing nostalgia and why the Trump-GOP agenda comprehensively works against his stated goal of creating good American jobs. 

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