Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

“Coketown, with its vast, smoke-belching mills and ceaseless clatter, stood as a monument to a system that traded fancy and feeling for raw, relentless production. Its factories loomed like giant, unfeeling engines—a world of brick, iron, and mechanical routine.”—Charles Dickens, Hard Times

One of the things that has been characteristic of Americans since the start of the republic is parents’ hope and belief that their children can do better than they did. It is always a forward striving.

But that’s not what the Trump Administration thinks should be the case.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says that after all of those factories come rolling back into the US there will be jobs galore for blue-collar workers.

Those jobs will be there for, well, generation upon generation. And they won’t necessarily change.

As he told CNBC:

“This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

That’s right: Get a job in a factory and don’t leave.

Maybe if you’re lucky there will be barracks that you and your offspring can live in.

Perhaps you will buy all of your products at the factory store. You’ll get married at the factory chapel. Your children will be born in the factory hospital. You’ll be buried in the factory cemetery.

MAGA!

To be sure, many factory jobs of today are far superior than they were in the time of Dark Satanic Mills.

But one of the reasons why these factory jobs are better is because of the work done by government agencies including OSHA and the EPA. They established regulations that help assure the health and safety of not only the people working in the factories, but the people who live in the vicinity of factories.

OSHA. . .EPA. . .regulations. . . Bah! Who needs them?

There is another reason why factories of today are different from those of yesterday: Automation. Things like robots. Not Elon’s Optimus, the humanoid robot that he claims will revolutionize everything. . .even though in his public demonstrations the robots were operated by humans behind the scenes, sort of like those little robots rolling around in amusement parks.

No, we are talking about industrial robots that have a robust design and are built to deal with the rigors of factory work.

These robots have what is known as a “mean time between failures” measured in tens of thousands of hours. If a factory is running a three-shift/five-days-a-week schedule, this would mean 6,240 hours per year. Industrial robots are likely not going to fail in that period of time.

Sure, there is a need for preventative maintenance. And there is a need for programming.

But there will be a need for robotics technicians.

According to RoboticsCareer.org, someone who wants to be a robotics technician will “benefit from some training in mechanics. You’ll want to spend time particularly focused on hydraulics, pneumatics, and electronics, as all of these will have a role in the continuing operation of the machines.”

What’s more: “Part of this material maintenance of robots is an understanding of basic engineering principles like physics and fluid mechanics. You’ll also benefit from more electronics-focused areas like working with microprocessors, circuit boards, networking technology, and other computer technology.”

Yes, there is a non-trivial amount of training required.

Funny: You hear Team Trump talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back but not about preparing the workforce to take those jobs. Have you heard a single word about what is going to be done to get people prepared to take these jobs?

According to The National Association of Manufacturers’ Q2 2024 Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey, 67.7% of those surveyed say their biggest business challenge is “Attracting and retaining a quality workforce.” And this is right now, when it seems as though the US has little if any manufacturing.

Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers have it that there are 482,000 job openings in manufacturing occupations right now. Seems that people aren’t in a big hurry to take them.

And let’s face it: the amount of automation that will need to be deployed in all of the factories that are allegedly going to come back will be tremendous because these factories will need to be as cost effective as possible. The number of jobs created will be a fraction of what they were in an earlier age that Trump certainly thinks about.

Once upon a time, Republicans, particularly those who consider themselves “conservatives,” cited Adam Smith’s economic approaches as being those that should be followed.

Smith wrote this about mercantilism, which is what Trump is pursuing with the tariffs:

“It is thus that every system which [tries], either by extraordinary encouragements to draw towards a particular industry a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraints, force from a particular industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is in reality [harmful to] the great purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labor.”

Trump and Lutnick certainly wouldn’t like that last sentence.

Odds are Wealth of Nations won’t be available in the company library.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings. His columns also appear in Substack in the Hustings.