The tariff debate is a boon for people who make a living talking, writing, broadcasting, or speculating about the economic health of the U.S. and the world, because it will never really end. If the tariffs on imported materials and products spike inflation and tank economic growth then the policy concepts and those that endorse them will have to bear the disgrace. But if, as they insist, tariffs bring new economic development, capital investment, manufacturing job growth, wage and income increases, and especially rising tax revenues to offset the burgeoning U.S. deficit - then some new understanding of global economics will have been defined.
It's already begun. The renewed intense focus on “free trade” or “fair trade” has changed the way the tariff debaters treat the matter of employment in the U.S. economy. Jobs have always been recognized as valuable tools for economic growth, civic tranquility, and personal responsibility, but now with reference to tariffs the jobs issue is somehow more attenuated: “Will Anyone Take the Factory Jobs Trump Wants to Bring Back to America?” (subs. req.) The Wall Street Journal asked in a May 19 headline. They might as well have stated: “We should not have to put up with tariffs just so some fellow citizens can be employed”.
That article, which reports on the management and employees of an Ohio foundry, is not as adverse to the ideals of factory employment as the title implies. An economist at the pro-business American Enterprise Institute is less hospitable: “Is There Really Pent-Up Demand for Ten Times the Manufacturing Jobs We Have?” scoffed Scott Winship in a post that picks at polling data meant to demonstrate public support for anti-globalist policies.
And perhaps first to raise this criticism of job-creation goals was an August 2024 entry by Colin Grabow for the libertarian Cato Institute, asserting that “Americans Think Increased Manufacturing Employment Would Be Good for the Country but Not for Themselves”. The implication here is that some types of work are not fit for the highly advanced economy we should aim to have.
Much of this new perspective on employment follows from that futuristic vision of work – in which labor is just a cost to be reduced, and all the hard tasks are merely indistinguishable steps toward a finished product. Those making these manufacturing-skeptical arguments seem to be trying out new points of contention, trying to undermine the efficacy of a tariff regime before the trade data has even been compiled.
This may be because their true objection to tariffs is the higher retail prices, higher materials and services charges, and especially the higher wages they expect tariffs will incur – and indeed are intended by the tariff proponents. The opposition to tariffs runs parallel to faithfulness to consumerism, an economic ideal that concentrates wealth but dissipates personal values.
This is the point that brings real passion from the pro-tariff side, although they hardly seem to realize it is driving them. Proponents of tariffs acknowledge the value of manufacturing jobs – their side has been decrying off-shoring since at least the 1980s – but their motivation now seems to be retribution for those lost decades. Are the tariffs alone enough to ensure those manufacturing jobs are reshored? Will tariffs imbue individuals and their neighbors and neighborhoods with the stability and confidence they are so nostalgic for? Are they prepared to join with the automotive and aerospace workers now impeding those industries in the fight for better working conditions and better compensation?
And what is the pro-tariff counterpoint to the skeptics’ view about the suitability of Americans for manufacturing work? After all, this relates directly to persistent workforce issues in domestic manufacturing, how to locate and train workers, to retain them once they are valuable, and how to encourage and reward so that their value to the business continues and their humanity is esteemed.
We will continue to debate tariffs because that is shaping the daily decisions of investors and businesses. But what no one seems ready to address is that the issue of tariffs is driving a wedge on the much more consequential issue of whether individuals are part of the problem or part of the answer.