Commerce chief wants you to work in factories 'for the rest of your life'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Another day in Trump’s America, another idiotic comment from an out-of-touch multibillionaire.

During an interview on CNBC Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that President Donald Trump's asinine tariffs will lead Americans to work in factories for the rest of their lives—and that they'll love it. He said that a benefit of Trump’s tariffs will be that manufacturing plants will move back onshore.

"It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here. We let the auto plants go overseas,” he said.

Of course, no one wants to work a menial factory job for the rest of their days. The American dream is not to subject your kids and grandkids to a life of low-wage, low-skilled work, but rather to have upward mobility, an easier life, and solid wages.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/29/2319530/-Commerce-chief-wants-you-to-work-in-factories-for-the-rest-of-your-life

Nutlick should work in a job for the rest of his life that befits him more like cleaning public restrooms, sewers or pumping septic tanks.
I'm sure he'd love it.

[DBoon]

1. sounds like feudalism

you are born a serf, you die a serf, and your decedents will always be serfs

[Justice Brandeis]

2. That's a Big No for me

I didn't spend 12 years in college and postgraduate school, getting three degrees and running up $50,000 in student loans (all of which I paid back!) to work in a factory for the rest of my life.

[Prairie Gates]

3. The auto plants moved overseas because Americans unionized and voted for job safety regs

The simple truth is that people hated manufacturing jobs, and it took decades of struggle to make pay commensurate with the horror of the shopfloor and to get government to institute regulations that made worker safety a requirement. Both the pay, the change of working conditions, and the assurances of worker safety cut into the companies' profits, so they moved offshore to retain their profits for their shareholders.

The nostalgia and romanticization about manufacturing is misplaced: what is actually missed is the post-war settlement in which labor had the power to force capital into numerous concessions on pay, conditions, and safety.

The entire Trump economic program is nostaglia and misunderstanding. They want to bring manufacturing back, but without unions or safety regulations. Even if they were to succeed (unlikely), this would only replicate the conditions of struggle that caused the capitalists to find other ways of organizing production in the first place.

The real question is whether Lutnick and the other Trumpies believe what they're saying about manufacturing. If they do, they are dangerous morons. If they don't, they are probably more dangerous, because then they believe that the police apparatus has been sufficiently developed to have manufacturing without labor struggle in the United States: in other words, they think they can push wages so low at home that they can compete with other authoritarian regimes (China) on cost.

[maxrandb]

8. Exactly! The fucksticks try to make coal-mining sound like it was fucking heaven

My grandfather worked to unionize coal miners in Corning, OH. He got put in a hospital by some goons, but they got their union.

He died from Black Lung disease at 63.

It sure wasn't "paradise".

There is going to be so much automation, even if some "factory" work returns, it's going to be the temporary 12-18 months it takes to construct the "factory".

[Skittles]

4. love how repukes talk about offshoring like they had nothing to do with it

seriously, they are DEMENTED

[leftstreet]

5. People want the wages associated with those union jobs

The return of those "manufacturing jobs" won't bring those wages, only Unions did that.

[Initech]

6. Hell no! Fuck you Lutnick!

Do these assholes ever listen to themselves talk and see how batshit insane and fucking evil their ideas are? Seriously, we have a cabinet full of James Bond villains, each more evil than the next.

[haele]

7. It's a play to the underemployed, resentful rubes in the diners moaning about the lack of union jobs...

"The factory job that allowed my Pappy to raise us kids and Mom could stay home. " That factory that closed up and left because of NAFTA or Venture Capital taking over.
Politicians and Business Policy Makers love to talk about the Happy Days and Leave it to Beaver 50's/60's White Middle/Working Class economy - like it was real instead of an idealized post-War childhood dream.
Factory work was Hard and lead to shortened lifespans.
Middle Class wasn't unlimited consumerism , even for the higher wage earners; there was a lot of scrimping and saving for house emergencies, repairs, medical issues - my parents (Dad was a teacher who moonlighted as a gas station mechanic) couldn't pay off the monthly bills covering two difficult pregnancies, births, and follow-up post natal care (and the hysterectomy after my little brother) for ten years.
In the 1960's, State College Tuition for a Bachelor's Degree was cheaper than an attending doctor and hospital birth.
Yes, people worked in factories or in the skilled trade work all their lives - because those jobs took years off their lives.
And their widows ended up trying to survive on half a pension or a one-time payout, if they were lucky enough the employer didn't just shrug their shoulders and say - "He earned it, you didn't." And walk off.

[Johonny]

9. The good news, he doesnt want you to live too long

[uponit7771]

10. Those jobs would be automated in less than 10 yrs