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Manufacturing in the US
Article

Manufacturing in the US

Will Trump’s Strategy Repatriate Highly Paid Jobs?

Bruegel, 2017

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8

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  • Controversial
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Recommendation

Bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States by restructuring its trade deals with other countries ranks high on President Trump’s priority list. Such rhetoric has strong emotional appeal, but Guntram B. Wolff, head of the European think tank Bruegel, explains how revamped trade policies may do more harm than good to American workers. While always politically neutral, getAbstract suggests this concise economic overview to anyone interested in the potentially unintended economic consequences of political promises.

Summary

One of US president Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to bring well-paid manufacturing jobs back to the United States by reworking international trade agreements. Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross, two major figures in the Trump administration, advocated an economic vision to accomplish this in a paper posted to the campaign’s website in September 2016. The main claim made by Navarro and Ross is that by relocating factories to other countries, US manufacturers widened the trade deficit, destroyed good-paying manufacturing jobs and left workers to take lower-paying service sector positions.

It’s true that trade...

About the Author

Guntram B. Wolff is the director of Bruegel, a European think tank.


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