Trump’s manufacturing dream is a mirage

At the heart of the Trump administration’s policies is one overarching goal: in Vice President JD Vance’s words from a speech this week, it is to stage the “great American manufacturing comeback.” Donald Trump believes that the key to transforming the United States along the lines that he wants — economically, socially and politically — is to revive the factories and foundries across this country. Unfortunately, not only is it highly unlikely to happen, but the efforts to move in this direction will be costly and damaging for Americans.

The idea that America should make more things is a seductive one. We all think of a rich and powerful country as one with huge factories belching smoke, churning out stuff and selling it to the world. It is deeply imprinted in our minds. But it is an image of the past, not the future. The most advanced economies in the world today are almost all dominated by services. Services account for the vast majority of jobs in the world’s richest industrialized countries. In the U.S., services account for more than 80 percent of all nonfarm jobs. Manufacturing is less than 10 percent. America’s distinctive exports to the world are software and software services, entertainment, financial services, and other such intangible things — and in these, the U.S. runs not a trade deficit but a surplus with the rest of the world.

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