The Return Of Bad Jobs— Guest Post By Mark Pinsley

Mark Pinsley is the Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Controller. A progressive, he is being widely urged to run for Congress. Yesterday he looked at what Trump’s tariffs are brining to Pennsylvania: bad jobs.

-by Mark Pinsley

On April 2, 2025, referred to as "Liberation Day" by Donald Trump, sweeping tariffs were announced on goods from nearly every part of the world. A 10% blanket tariff on all imports, a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, and tariffs ranging from 10% to 34% on products from the European Union, Brazil, Canada, and more were announced. It was billed as a rebirth of American industry, a reckoning with globalization, and a promise to working-class Americans that our lost jobs would return.

The hope is familiar. It's been lingering since the factories shut down, the mills closed, NAFTA and China's WTO entry, and the endless bipartisan betrayals that shipped production overseas. Tariffs are pitched as justice— as an economic border wall to keep American jobs in and foreign competition out.

But that story isn't real.

Tariffs are often seen as a way to revive domestic manufacturing. The idea is that by making foreign goods more expensive, companies will choose to produce their products locally, creating jobs and strengthening the economy. However, evidence from the real world makes this theory difficult to accept.

When Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018, the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated 1,800 jobs saved in the steel industry, and 75,000 jobs lost in steel-intensive sectors, like construction, auto manufacturing, and machinery.

Moody's Analytics found that the trade war with China cost the U.S. economy 300,000 jobs and reduced GDP by 0.3% by the end of 2019.

The story repeats: targeted industries gain a little while everyone else loses a lot. Jobs don't spring up out of thin air; they move around or disappear.

There’s another problem that gets less attention but cuts deeper: even when manufacturing jobs come back, they aren't the jobs people remember. The dream is a stable, unionized job that pays enough to raise a family. The reality is a non-union temp gig on the night shift, with unpredictable hours and no benefits.

Samsung's opening of a new plant in South Carolina after Trump's 2018 washing machine tariffs was celebrated as a victory. But those jobs paid far less than union jobs in the Midwest.

Even in industries that see growth, automation limits hiring. A factory that once needed 500 workers may now run with 50. The remaining jobs often require technical skills many displaced workers don't have, and the rest are relegated to low-wage, repetitive work.

Real wages for manufacturing workers have been flat or declining for decades. According to FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), average hourly earnings in manufacturing have barely kept up with inflation, especially for production and non-supervisory roles.

Because of the collapse of union power, especially in right-to-work states where many new factories are opening, workers have less bargaining power than ever. This is not a revival— it's a substitution. The good jobs are still gone.

Tariffs fail to deliver good jobs— they act as a national sales tax hidden in the price of goods. When tariffs raise import costs, companies pass those increases on to consumers. Lower-income households are hit hardest because they spend a larger share of their income on basic goods, such as clothes, electronics, and household items.

A 2019 analysis by the Tax Foundation found that the trade war tariffs functioned like a $42 billion tax hike on American consumers. That's about $320 per household, but the impact wasn't spread evenly. Families at the bottom of the income ladder paid a much higher share of their income in these hidden taxes.

In response to the latest round of tariffs, retailers warn shoppers to buy now before prices rise further. That panic is a sign of what's to come. Furniture, appliances, tools, smartphones— none of them will get cheaper.

Tariffs don't punish foreign companies. They punish American consumers.

Meanwhile, the gains don't go to the people paying more at the store. They go to shareholders and executives (the rich). When domestic companies are shielded from competition, they can raise prices without improving quality or productivity. That money doesn't go into worker wages or training— it goes into dividends and stock buybacks.

Between 2010 and 2020, major U.S. corporations gave away 90 to 95% of their profits to shareholders . There's no reason to believe tariff protection will change that. It only encourages it.

In the U.S., finance is a mechanism for concentrating wealth, not rebuilding industry. Without a plan to reinvest, tariffs become another way to funnel income from the working class to the elite.

There’s a reason rebuilding American industry isn't as simple as making foreign goods more expensive. High productivity doesn't come from a single factory. It comes from an ecosystem: schools, research universities, infrastructure, trained workers, nearby suppliers, and public investment.

Tariffs don't build that ecosystem. They move the pieces around.

Korea, Japan, and Germany succeeded not because they used tariffs in isolation but because tariffs were one part of a broader, state-led industrial strategy. The U.S. has no such plan. There's no coordination between tariffs, workforce development, education, or infrastructure. There's no pipeline to skilled jobs. There's no investment in the regions hardest hit.

What we're witnessing now is not industrial policy. It's political theater. The new tariffs are framed as a bold move to protect American workers, but won't deliver what they promise. They will raise prices, not bring back stable, union manufacturing jobs, increase inequality and deepen the despair already felt by millions of working people.

It's no coincidence that this announcement came with dramatic flair: "Liberation Day." It evokes war, patriotism, struggle, and victory. But the only thing being liberated is capital from labor. The only victory is for the same wealthy class, which has been winning for decades.

If we're serious about reviving American manufacturing, tariffs aren't enough. We need:

Strategic investment in industries that align with future growth (clean energy, semiconductors, public transit)
Federal and state funding for technical education and retraining
Labor standards tied to incentives: no subsidies without good wages and benefits
Infrastructure built around industrial clusters, not just highways to warehouses
And above all, worker voice— unions, collective bargaining, and democratic control over the direction of the economy
Without those things, tariffs are just a story we tell ourselves— a myth of revival that lets politicians posture while the structure beneath us continues to erode.

People want to believe that jobs are coming back, that something can be done, and that we haven't abandoned whole regions and generations. But hope built on false promises is just another form of cruelty. The hard truth is that tariffs won't rebuild the middle class. But there are other ways. The first step is to stop pretending the past is coming back and start building a future where work is dignified, fairly paid, and rooted in community.

Until then, new factories will pay the unlivable wages that other industries pay.