Latest news with #Bidenomics
The Hill
a day ago
- Business
- The Hill
Rove warns Trump against overpromising on economy
Republican strategist Karl Rove warned President Trump about making too many promises to the American people about the quality of the economy, predicting failure to deliver could cost Republicans in the midterm elections. 'On economics, Team Trump is making the same mistake as the last administration,' Rove wrote in a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. 'President Biden and big-name Democrats went across America proclaiming 'Bidenomics is working.' People felt the opposite.' The danger for Trump, the cable news pundit argued, is 'he's addicted to superlatives and self-congratulations and prone to declaring premature success.' 'While Republicans generally agree with the president's depiction of things, independents don't,' Rove, who previously served as a top aide to former President George W. Bush, continued. 'They are deeply concerned about tariffs, debt and prices.' He also wrote that Trump and his allies 'would be smarter to underpromise and overdeliver, especially since righting the economy will take time.' 'It's self-destructive for Republicans to make over-the-top claims,' the pundit wrote. 'How voters feel about their own circumstances will hugely influence next year's outcome. Seeming out of touch could make the midterms even harder.' The analysis comes as the president seeks to reassure the public about the economy following the latest dismal jobs report and uncertainty around his trade agenda following the latest rollout of tariffs on foreign trading partners.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Factory jobs aren't the future working Americans want
Undaunted by his predecessor's failure to spark a manufacturing renaissance, President Trump also dreams of reindustrializing America. He won't succeed either, because no president has the power to undo a half-century of post-industrial evolution. Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on 'bringing back' factory jobs? Both grew up in the '50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn't just nostalgia for a lost 'golden age.' There's also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing. Since 1971, the share of Americans who live in lower-income households has increased, reports the Pew Research Center: 'Notably, the increase in the share who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income. In that sense, these changes are also a sign of economic progress overall.' The emergence of a highly educated upper middle class, however, is scant consolation to economically insecure working families. This divergence in the economic prospects of college and non-college workers is at the root of today's working-class revolt against political elites here and across Europe. Populists insist that the cure for economic inequality is more factory jobs. But is this really what working Americans want? Urged on by progressives, President Biden spent trillions to rebuild the economy 'from the middle out,' shelved trade in favor of tariffs and industrial policy, and tried to break up Big Tech companies that have supplanted yesterday's industrial giants. Yet Bidenomics delivered only marginal net gains in production jobs. President Trump thinks he can do better by taxing imports so much that manufacturers will be forced to locate production here lest they lose access to America's huge consumer market. Both approaches gloss over the fact that the U.S. still has a healthy manufacturing sector — in 2023, it was the world's second largest after China in terms of output. What's changed is that productivity gains and automation have combined to shrink factory employment. Since 1980, the share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has steadily declined to just over 8 percent. This trend away from labor-intensive production won't be reversed. The only way a high-wage country like ours can stay competitive in manufacturing is to make our factories more efficient. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of Americans make their living in service-oriented jobs. The Economist notes that the manufacturing wage premium is falling, and there are lots of jobs with decent pay available to workers without degrees in skilled trades, repair and maintenance, health care and tech-related fields. The digital economy, especially, has become a prodigious source of good jobs and careers for workers on either side of the diploma divide. A new analysis by my Progressive Policy Institute colleague Michael Mandel finds that, since 2019, employment in the tech/info/ecommerce sector — which encompasses broadband, cloud computing, software and data centers as well as online retail — has risen by 18 percent, compared to a 4 percent gain in the rest of the private sector. The average weekly pay is 47 percent higher than in other private sector jobs. Given these shifts in the locus of opportunity for working Americans, Trump's inflationary tariffs make no economic sense. They're best understood as reparations for past economic injuries suffered by his blue-collar base. Yet non-college Americans don't seem eager to return to assembly-line work. Asked in a PPI poll where in today's economy they see the best career opportunities for their children, only 13 percent picked manufacturing, while 44 percent chose 'the communications/digital economy, such as writing code, managing data or e-commerce.' Democrats should leave the smokestack reveries to Trump and the populist left and offer frustrated working families something different: A positive vision for how they can flourish in post-industrial America. Their top economic priority is getting the cost of living down. Perversely, Trump's tariffs do just the opposite. Democrats should offer full-throated opposition to protectionism and work to dismantle tariffs on U.S. friends and allies. They should also get out of their defensive crouch on trade. In a supreme irony, Trump's trade wars are making Americans free traders again. Not only are his tariffs unpopular, but voters now overwhelmingly say that trade improves their quality of life. Putting working families first also means cutting regressive taxes on work, fighting exclusionary zoning that drives housing prices out of reach and breaking up concentrated markets like food processing, ticketing and hospitals and health care providers to expand consumer choice and drive prices down. The centerpiece of a new Democratic offer to working families should be a new national commitment to guaranteeing 'high skills for all.' Non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, need a more robust alternative to college: A post-secondary system of work-study opportunities that enable young people to get in-demand skills, credentials and work experience quickly and affordably. Key features of this twin-track approach to upward mobility include dramatically ramping up apprenticeships, eliminating degree requirement for all but highly technical jobs, expanding 'workforce Pell Grants' for high-quality training programs, creating work-study opportunities for all high school students and supporting innovative 'apprenticeship degrees' that enable people to earn money while earning degrees. President Trump isn't wrong that blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of deindustrialization. But his promise of a factory job boom is Fool's Gold. Instead, Democrats should offer working families a new deal that equips them to compete for the jobs that define America's future, not its past. Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
13-06-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Factory jobs aren't the future working Americans want
Undaunted by his predecessor's failure to spark a manufacturing renaissance, President Trump also dreams of reindustrializing America. He won't succeed either, because no president has the power to undo a half-century of post-industrial evolution. Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on 'bringing back' factory jobs? Both grew up in the '50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn't just nostalgia for a lost 'golden age.' There's also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing. Since 1971, the share of Americans who live in lower-income households has increased, reports the Pew Research Center: 'Notably, the increase in the share who are upper income was greater than the increase in the share who are lower income. In that sense, these changes are also a sign of economic progress overall.' The emergence of a highly educated upper middle class, however, is scant consolation to economically insecure working families. This divergence in the economic prospects of college and non-college workers is at the root of today's working-class revolt against political elites here and across Europe. Populists insist that the cure for economic inequality is more factory jobs. But is this really what working Americans want? Urged on by progressives, President Biden spent trillions to rebuild the economy 'from the middle out,' shelved trade in favor of tariffs and industrial policy, and tried to break up Big Tech companies that have supplanted yesterday's industrial giants. Yet Bidenomics delivered only marginal net gains in production jobs. President Trump thinks he can do better by taxing imports so much that manufacturers will be forced to locate production here lest they lose access to America's huge consumer market. Both approaches gloss over the fact that the U.S. still has a healthy manufacturing sector — in 2023, it was the world's second largest after China in terms of output. What's changed is that productivity gains and automation have combined to shrink factory employment. Since 1980, the share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has steadily declined to just over 8 percent. This trend away from labor-intensive production won't be reversed. The only way a high-wage country like ours can stay competitive in manufacturing is to make our factories more efficient. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of Americans make their living in service-oriented jobs. The Economist notes that the manufacturing wage premium is falling, and there are lots of jobs with decent pay available to workers without degrees in skilled trades, repair and maintenance, health care and tech-related fields. The digital economy, especially, has become a prodigious source of good jobs and careers for workers on either side of the diploma divide. A new analysis by my Progressive Policy Institute colleague Michael Mandel finds that, since 2019, employment in the tech/info/ecommerce sector — which encompasses broadband, cloud computing, software and data centers as well as online retail — has risen by 18 percent, compared to a 4 percent gain in the rest of the private sector. The average weekly pay is 47 percent higher than in other private sector jobs. Given these shifts in the locus of opportunity for working Americans, Trump's inflationary tariffs make no economic sense. They're best understood as reparations for past economic injuries suffered by his blue-collar base. Yet non-college Americans don't seem eager to return to assembly-line work. Asked in a PPI poll where in today's economy they see the best career opportunities for their children, only 13 percent picked manufacturing, while 44 percent chose 'the communications/digital economy, such as writing code, managing data or e-commerce.' Democrats should leave the smokestack reveries to Trump and the populist left and offer frustrated working families something different: A positive vision for how they can flourish in post-industrial America. Their top economic priority is getting the cost of living down. Perversely, Trump's tariffs do just the opposite. Democrats should offer full-throated opposition to protectionism and work to dismantle tariffs on U.S. friends and allies. They should also get out of their defensive crouch on trade. In a supreme irony, Trump's trade wars are making Americans free traders again. Not only are his tariffs unpopular, but voters now overwhelmingly say that trade improves their quality of life. Putting working families first also means cutting regressive taxes on work, fighting exclusionary zoning that drives housing prices out of reach and breaking up concentrated markets like food processing, ticketing and hospitals and health care providers to expand consumer choice and drive prices down. The centerpiece of a new Democratic offer to working families should be a new national commitment to guaranteeing 'high skills for all.' Non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, need a more robust alternative to college: A post-secondary system of work-study opportunities that enable young people to get in-demand skills, credentials and work experience quickly and affordably. Key features of this twin-track approach to upward mobility include dramatically ramping up apprenticeships, eliminating degree requirement for all but highly technical jobs, expanding 'workforce Pell Grants' for high-quality training programs, creating work-study opportunities for all high school students and supporting innovative 'apprenticeship degrees' that enable people to earn money while earning degrees. President Trump isn't wrong that blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of deindustrialization. But his promise of a factory job boom is Fool's Gold. Instead, Democrats should offer working families a new deal that equips them to compete for the jobs that define America's future, not its past. Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Economic populism from both parties fails working Americans
President Trump's startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades. They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher have grown by 14 percent. Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence. This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives. President Biden presided over a nearly $5 trillion public spending binge aimed at rebuilding a pandemic-stricken U.S. economy 'from the bottom up and middle out.' But Bidenomics ultimately struck out with working families, who identified it with rising living costs and eroding purchasing power. Although he owes his reelection mainly to inflation, it didn't take Trump long to break his promise to focus on batting it down. Instead, he's launched a global trade war that's driving prices back up for consumers and businesses, choking economic growth and provoking retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. An angry Trump lashed out at Walmart last week for announcing price increases, instructing the retail giant to 'eat the tariffs.' That's not an option for thousands of smaller businesses operating on slim profit margins. After four years of steady growth, the U.S. economy has shrunk 0.3 percent since Trump's return to the White House. Like Bidenomics before it, MAGA populism is failing working Americans. Both are based on dubious premises about what's gone wrong and how to fix it. Populists blame trade agreements and globalization for decimating factory jobs. This ignores structural changes that have affected all advanced economies — rising education levels, more women working, growing demand for services, the digital revolution. It also vastly overstates the power of policy to either cause or reverse deindustrialization. Trump is taxing most imports to shield U.S. companies from foreign competition and induce them to bring manufacturing jobs home. Yet America already has nearly half a million unfilled factory jobs. The share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has been falling steadily since 1950, to just eight percent today. Is it worth risking a new bout of inflation and possibly a recession to bump that number up a few points? Americans aren't buying Trump's prescription for a 'new golden age' built upon protectionism and autarchy. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs reports that 84 percent of Americans say trade is good for their standard of living and good for the U.S. economy (79 percent). Strikingly, 55 percent — including nearly half of Republicans — want Washington to pursue a global free trade policy, up from 34 percent in 2024. No wonder Trump is crawfishing away from his 'beautiful' tariffs and trying to cut new trade deals with Great Britain and China. Yet even as his right-wing economic populism implodes, progressives continue to clamor for a left-wing version. They see it as the antidote to 'neoliberalism,' which they define as a fixation with free markets, free trade, global economic integration and fiscal austerity that supposedly gripped both parties over the last four decades. The populist left demands a 'post-neoliberal' agenda — conveniently forgetting that in Bidenomics, it already got one. In his first major decision, Biden sided with progressive economists pushing for a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. They dismissed warnings that a big dose of deficit spending would ignite inflation. Biden also put trade policy in the deep freeze, left some Trump tariffs in place and embraced industrial policies to 'reshore' factories and supply chains, nurture domestic chip manufacturing and invest billions in electric cars and clean energy production. The White House hired a left-wing academic to launch an unsuccessful bid to break up America's most successful tech companies. And Biden made good on his promise to be the most pro-union president ever, intervening on labor's behalf in organizing drives and even walking a picket line with striking workers. While Biden can take credit for new investments in chip fabs and clean energy production, much of his spending on education and infrastructure, including on rural broadband, has yet to yield positive results. From January 2023 to January 2025, manufacturing jobs dropped. And while union membership under Biden saw a modest uptick (240,000 workers), the share of unionized workers fell below 10 percent as the workforce grew. Bidenomics won raves from progressives but Bronx cheers from working-class voters. They linked heavy government spending to high prices and resented what they saw as Democrats' inattention to their economic struggles. As The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait concluded in a Bidenomics post-mortem, 'The notion that there is a populist economic formula to reversing the rightward drift of the working class has been tried, and, as clearly as these things can be proved by real-world experimentation, it has failed.' Non-college Americans aren't asking for statist 'solutions' — protectionism, unrestrained deficit spending and industrial policies larded with superfluous social policy mandates — that flout basic economics and common sense. Populism, as practiced by Biden and Trump, has foundered on the patronizing premise that working families want yesterday's factory jobs back. But they know the economy has changed and want to be part of where it's going, not where it has been. Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
23-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Economic populism from both parties fails working Americans
President Trump's startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades. They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher have grown by 14 percent. Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence. This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives. President Biden presided over a nearly $5 trillion public spending binge aimed at rebuilding a pandemic-stricken U.S. economy 'from the bottom up and middle out.' But Bidenomics ultimately struck out with working families, who identified it with rising living costs and eroding purchasing power. Although he owes his reelection mainly to inflation, it didn't take Trump long to break his promise to focus on batting it down. Instead, he's launched a global trade war that's driving prices back up for consumers and businesses, choking economic growth and provoking retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. An angry Trump lashed out at Walmart last week for announcing price increases, instructing the retail giant to 'eat the tariffs.' That's not an option for thousands of smaller businesses operating on slim profit margins. After four years of steady growth, the U.S. economy has shrunk 0.3 percent since Trump's return to the White House. Like Bidenomics before it, MAGA populism is failing working Americans. Both are based on dubious premises about what's gone wrong and how to fix it. Populists blame trade agreements and globalization for decimating factory jobs. This ignores structural changes that have affected all advanced economies — rising education levels, more women working, growing demand for services, the digital revolution. It also vastly overstates the power of policy to either cause or reverse deindustrialization. Trump is taxing most imports to shield U.S. companies from foreign competition and induce them to bring manufacturing jobs home. Yet America already has nearly half a million unfilled factory jobs. The share of U.S. workers in manufacturing has been falling steadily since 1950, to just eight percent today. Is it worth risking a new bout of inflation and possibly a recession to bump that number up a few points? Americans aren't buying Trump's prescription for a 'new golden age' built upon protectionism and autarchy. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs reports that 84 percent of Americans say trade is good for their standard of living and good for the U.S. economy (79 percent). Strikingly, 55 percent — including nearly half of Republicans — want Washington to pursue a global free trade policy, up from 34 percent in 2024. No wonder Trump is crawfishing away from his 'beautiful' tariffs and trying to cut new trade deals with Great Britain and China. Yet even as his right-wing economic populism implodes, progressives continue to clamor for a left-wing version. They see it as the antidote to 'neoliberalism,' which they define as a fixation with free markets, free trade, global economic integration and fiscal austerity that supposedly gripped both parties over the last four decades. The populist left demands a 'post-neoliberal' agenda — conveniently forgetting that in Bidenomics, it already got one. In his first major decision, Biden sided with progressive economists pushing for a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. They dismissed warnings that a big dose of deficit spending would ignite inflation. Biden also put trade policy in the deep freeze, left some Trump tariffs in place and embraced industrial policies to 'reshore' factories and supply chains, nurture domestic chip manufacturing and invest billions in electric cars and clean energy production. The White House hired a left-wing academic to launch an unsuccessful bid to break up America's most successful tech companies. And Biden made good on his promise to be the most pro-union president ever, intervening on labor's behalf in organizing drives and even walking a picket line with striking workers. While Biden can take credit for new investments in chip fabs and clean energy production, much of his spending on education and infrastructure, including on rural broadband, has yet to yield positive results. From January 2023 to January 2025, manufacturing jobs dropped. And while union membership under Biden saw a modest uptick (240,000 workers), the share of unionized workers fell below 10 percent as the workforce grew. Bidenomics won raves from progressives but Bronx cheers from working-class voters. They linked heavy government spending to high prices and resented what they saw as Democrats' inattention to their economic struggles. As The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait concluded in a Bidenomics post-mortem, 'The notion that there is a populist economic formula to reversing the rightward drift of the working class has been tried, and, as clearly as these things can be proved by real-world experimentation, it has failed.' Non-college Americans aren't asking for statist 'solutions' — protectionism, unrestrained deficit spending and industrial policies larded with superfluous social policy mandates — that flout basic economics and common sense. Populism, as practiced by Biden and Trump, has foundered on the patronizing premise that working families want yesterday's factory jobs back. But they know the economy has changed and want to be part of where it's going, not where it has been. Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.
