The failed politics of nostalgia

The primary justification for Trump’s tariffs was that it is worth it for everyone to pay higher prices if it would bring back more manly-man blue collar jobs (or at least what New York/Florida billionaires imagine to be such.) The problem, as has long been evident, is that the policy is failing even on its own dubious terms:

One year ago today, President Donald Trump stood at a lectern in the Rose Garden, held up a booklet of trade barriers as thick as the Bible and told a crowd of people in suits and hard hats that with his planned tariffs, “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already.”

Those jobs and factories haven’t materialized, at least on the grand scale the president and his top advisers have promised.

Manufacturing payrolls actually declined slightly over the past year, with 98,000 fewer jobs year-over-year based on the most recent data from the Labor Department. There are 29,900 fewer auto manufacturing jobs and 18,000 fewer wood manufacturing jobs — both sectors the president has tried to protect with trade barriers. New, higher tariffs on steel and aluminum, moreover, have hindered the construction of factories. The industry’s hiring rate — often a reflection of confidence in the economic outlook — is lower now than it was at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The effort is there, the action is there, but is it actually accomplishing the goal they set out to do?” said Nick Iacovella, executive vice president at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a pro-tariff group. “I think in that respect there is still a lot of work left to do.”

Trump’s protectionist industrial policy earned the backing of free trade skeptics on both ends of the political spectrum, including Democratic-leaning organized labor groups. But even many of those policy supporters have been dismayed by the administration’s chaotic rollout of new — and often shifting — duties and trade agreements, heightening uncertainty and making businesses hesitant to invest.

Voters also remain deeply frustrated with Trump’s handling of the economy — a CNN poll published Wednesday put the president at a career low 31 percent approval rating on that issue — and the public’s outlook on the labor market has soured.

Liberation Day was well named, in that a fair number of people were liberated from their jobs.

Turns out that xenophobic vibes are not a sound basis for economic policy.