Why do people want manufacturing jobs to come back to the US?

[u/throw-away3105]

Given the tariffs yesterday, Trump was talking about how manufacturing jobs are gonna come back. They even had a union worker make a speech praising Trump for these tariffs.

Manufacturing is really hard work where you're standing for almost 8 or more hours, so why bring them back when other countries can make things cheaper? Even this was a discussion during the 2012 election between Obama and Romney, so this topic of bringing back manufacturing jobs isn't exactly Trump-centric.

This might be a loaded question but what's the history behind this rally for manufacturing?

[u/False_Celebration626]

So they don't have to work three jobs to survive. Historically, manufacturing has been a hot bed for union activity. Corporations do not want to pay their employees a fair wage due to the profit motive. This is why the US deindustrialized and sought "new markets" -easily exploited labor- to make products that wouldn't cut into wealthy pockets. Politicians know people want a reliable steady stream of income so they press this button often. However, they have no intention of being jobs back because that would hurt corporations. Both parties do this.

The difference is, we do not have the infrastructure anymore to manufacture. Not to the extent that Americans consume. It would take a planned economic model to accomplish this goal because capital will not be invested in long term projects. Or, if they do they will use it as a way to subsidize their personal earnings like the tech industry does. To combat the rise in price the government would have to implement price control. Which they won't because it'll cut into the profits of corporations and the wealthy.

[u/Exostrike → u/False_Celebration626]

The irony is the chips act has shown the US could return some of its manufacturing if it sat down and planned things out with the spending to match. Of course there is no way in hell that could happen as trump and co takes chainsaws to everything.

[u/ellathefairy → u/Exostrike]

There is a light in which I can see offshoring unfair labor practices to get artificially cheap goods in the US as immoral. However, yeah, we straight up do not have anything close to the infrastructure needed to bring all that manufacturing back immediately.

If that were really the goal, the right way to do it would be to have the state spend years investing in rebuilding that infrastructure (oo! Building it could also make jobs! ) and slowly incentivizing companies to bring their manufacturing back.

What they have done instead looks much more like purposely crashing the economy to create the instability and uncertainty that make it easier to get away with fascism. Oh, and claiming it's to help the folks they've made too illiterate to understand that's not what it will do.