Bruce Springsteen’s depressing lyrics to one of his best songs (My Hometown) seems to capture the mood of the declinist right portion of the MAGA movement:

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows, And vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody, Wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks, Foreman says, These jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back, To your hometown

This mood is exactly what Mr. Trump wanted to overcome with his promise to bring “all the jobs back.” Of course he didn’t in his first term, nor will the trade wars he has unleashed lead to this result. As a note, it doesn’t really matter whether he called uncle this week, or whether this was his brilliant strategy all along, once again, Adam Smith won the day. The trade deficit is only one part of the complicated story, and the capital account surplus that is the necessary other side of the coin includes foreign investment that props up our profligate government (which we the people collectively at least accept–we’re to blame for the almost $37T in debt). This week’s pressure in the bond market and the fall of the dollar ultimately forced the Trump Adminstration’s retreat. It doesn’t mean that he won’t ultimately be successful, as other countries surely realize the harm to their own interests, but his claim that trade wars are easy to win was shown to be demonstrably false, making the score Adam Smith 2, Donald Trump 0.*

Now Mr. Trump is absolutely right that the rest of the world is not playing the same way we are with trade policy (although let’s not be naive and think we don’t have some of the same corruption these other countries do).** But when you look at the value of the dollar and the price of gold over the last couple of months, you can see the world turning away from the U.S., and that’s just not good on any dimension. But at least some might say that’s fine–we’ll just make everything at home. The problem is not just that young people really don’t want the jobs the administration is hankering for, it’s that if their policy leads to a different distribution of jobs (substituting service sector jobs that people increasingly want for manufacturing jobs), they still won’t get the effect they want. First the rust belt region has some of the worst state governments possible (e.g., Illinois). If you were to bring jobs back, is there any reason why you would ever want to do it in the midwest? A number of our readers have mentioned their concern over the loss of communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. Maybe we should be focusing on how we make businesses want to come to our communities rather than discourage them. There is a reason why red states like Texas and Florida are getting so much more growth in manufacturing jobs than blue states, and contra this article, it’s not just people like the weather in Texas! But the second reason is more profound. No company is going to invest anywhere in labor intensive manufacturing where we have higher wages–we must have capital and technology to make each worker productive enough to justify the higher wages and that means automation. Just watch a couple of minutes in this video of how the 2025 Porsche 911 is built. Yes there are people, but there is a ton of automation.

Now unions (which are quite common in those rust belt states) are the most resistant to automation because it replaces dues-paying members, but they fail to see that this is the only way to justify higher wages, since capital and technology make each worker that remains more productive and justifies higher wages. That is always and everywhere the only source of wage growth–higher productivity. But that is not the only reason to celebrate technology and higher productivity.

Most fundamentally, work is a gift from God. We see this is the Garden of Eden, where Adam is commanded to “cultivate and keep” the garden in Genesis 2:15, and this is before The Fall. Work is not part of humanity’s curse in Adam, but rather a good gift that has now been corrupted with toil. Yet technology overcomes the curse, and in this day and age, allows even the most helpless of humans to be a part of God’s economy in serving one another. Watch this short video to see the blessing of how technology and automation lead not only to higher wages, but a more inclusive world which allows fuller participation by those in society.

May God continue to bless us as we carry out our cultural mandate to make order out of chaos. And may that include giving more people opportunity to have the meaning inherent in human work.

* I’ll give Adam Smith the first point based on the market’s negative reaction to his bad policy, and the second point for Mr. Trump’s retreat.

** Every country has special interest politics that make some sectors of the economy more privileged than others, meaning their citizens pay much higher prices than they could get on world markets if not prohibited by their government. For just one example, Americans pay ~ double what the rest of the world pays for sugar (which is why Florida sugar growers contribute handsomely to politicians). An unintended consequence is the substitution for corn fructose syrup, which in some ways is more harmful to your health than sugar.