Gerald Seib writes for The Wall Street Journal. Most recently Seib has penned a long article (behind paywall) describing how Trump has changed the Republican Party in ways that will outlast his tenure in office. Much of Trump's approach has parted ways with the traditional Republican mantra, as for example preached by Ronald Reagan.
One thing Trump has emphasized is bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from the various third world countries to which they's migrated in search of cheap labor. This makes a lots of sense.
When we sent the jobs overseas we ignored the question of what those men and women who were formerly making and assembling things would do to earn the sort of living to which they'd been accustomed. Lots of high school grads earned enough working in manufacturing to buy a small house, 1-2 used cars, and maybe a modest fishing boat.
After the jobs went abroad their sons and daughters could find no work of similar value and income. Saying they should "learn to code" was a fig leaf, it wasn't going to happen. Especially when the firms hiring coders imported them from India on H-3 visas, and then sent both the Indians and the jobs they'd learned home to India at the end of 2 years.
So the next generation of high school grads ended up in service jobs that paid a barely living wage, not enough to buy a small home, a car, and a few minor luxuries. They were downwardly mobile, aware of the fact, and unhappy that they no longer could access the rump version of the American Dream their parents enjoyed.
The tech moguls' answer to this group is to put them all on the dole, because it's easier, and then forget about them. Implicitly, the belief is that once so sidelined, these unneeded people will suicide or OD on opiates - basically disappear, die out.
Trump offered them an answer they liked better, decent jobs and reduced competition from wage-lowering illegal aliens. Hence his 2016 victory. In spite of Covid-19, he's made real progress on their behalf. Who knows, maybe they'll reelect him.
