>nowhere do we want to isolate as a country. Look at all the jobless Americans in once thriving industrial cities. Generations left without pensions or skills all because we outsource our workers to other countries.
And we didn't pay for re-skilling, re-training, re-education. We didn't give them welfare benefits to hold over while they learned these new things. We did near nothing, and expected these areas simply to pick themselves back up organically.
Of course that failed. When you do little to nothing, you get little to nothing in return.
Tariffs and manufacturing aren't going to solve this fundamental problem, which is as industry demands shift they externalize the cost whenever possible, which leaves workers, cities and states with a poor deal. If you instead plan around the fact you can't micro manage the economy, but you can setup a meaningful floor that catches people when industry shifts and allows them to invest in themselves - without fear of losing their livelihood - to take advantage of the next opportunities or better yet, create new ones - you wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
Tariffs won't help. Bringing manufacturing - in whatever capacity does get brought back, it remains to be seen if this will even happen - won't help alleviate this in any meaningful way.
On top of all this, the tariffs are here, and there is little plan beyond simply implementing them and...waiting for industry to magically start manufacturing in the US again? What is the actual plan here?
I frankly can't understand the undeserved optimism. If we wanted to make things better for formerly industrial cities, we should have invested in them and their citizenry decades ago. We failed to do this meaningfully. Thats the real problem, and they aren't fixing that problem at all