Finance & economics | Blue-collar blues

Factory work is overrated. Here are the jobs of the future

America is trapped by its industrial fantasies

Illustration of a conveyor belt moving parcels with a cut-out in the middle in the shape of a worker with a hard hat on
Illustration: Alex Nabaum
|7 min read

Trumpian types are unanimous: America needs factories. The president describes how workers have “watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream”. Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, says that tariffs will “fill up all of the half-empty factories”. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, offers the most cartoonish pitch of all: “The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America.”

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Leave those fantasies behind”

From the June 14th 2025 edition

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