Whites in the rust belt, you guys fell for the Art of the Con.
Losing jobs to low cost labor means the USA losing wealth. But losing jobs to technology means the USA gaining wealth. As intelligent as you seem to be Axulus, I am surprised that you can not grasp that concept.
Anyway we have historically enjoyed higher productivity in the US due to innovation and working smarter. When you produce more widgets you get to be paid more as long as the CEO does not keep it all. Anyway, that's the part of our free market capitalistic system that actually works extremely well. What hasn't worked out so well is how that increase in productivity has become distributed. Nor the fact that cost of productions is somehow deemed to be a freely international trade able commodity but consumption (such as purchase of lower cost drugs from Canada) is not.
So no one said the world was fair and its not. But since I happen to live in the US, I also prefer what will be good for the US. Yes it's a pretty selfish viewpoint I guess but until someone invents a better kind of system that keeps everyone in the world prosperous without sucking the jobs from "fly over country in the US".... I'm preferring someone like Trump over a globalist free trader any day of the week. And since he has been in business most his life, he probably knows how to talk the talk to get a favorable deal with the trade.
And yes many on this board have made a very fair point that Trump is a chronic big time liar and swindler too, and I get that. But at least he is telling me some lies that I like to hear about fighting unfair trade deals....and that's way better than Hillary ever did. And as far as tariffs go there really is no such thing as any country that does not protect something or provide subsidies for something else. Its just a matter of priorities of how much better you want your own country to end up relative to others.
We will see what happens as Trump progresses into office, but so far I am very encouraged. More so than I have in a very long time. All I can see from Trump so far he is that he IS the real deal.
You are correct that it is the distribution of the productivity gains that matters. But Trump isn't going to do what is required to change the distribution, it will still go toward profits and nothing toward wages.
Trump proposed the largest tax cut for the rich of any of the Republican candidates. This is saying a lot. It will add five trillion dollars to the debt over ten years and dramatically add to the wealth of the already rich and not increase investment in the US at all. It will increase the current income inequality when we need to decrease it.
There are tens of trillions of dollars in cash in banks all over the world from previous tax cuts for the rich and from the productivity gains diverted from wages in the US over the last thirty five years or so. This is than money that can not be invested in production facilities to produce jobs, it is more money than can be "invested" in the stock market that has gone up 2300% nominal since 1980, savings really, it is money that can't be spent by the individuals who own it because they have run out of things to buy.
The Republicans will use the budget deficit to justify cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the other social programs. They will shift even more of the costs of a college education onto the students on top of the 1100% increase in the nominal costs since 1980.
They will cancel ObamaCare, if the insurance companies are willing to give up the 32 billion dollars in subsidies that the government directs to them. But they haven't in six years come up with an alternative that fits their ideology, i.e. feed the rich, that doesn't cost more and delivers less care for the money than the ACA does.
They will try to privatize as many government programs as possible not because the private sector can deliver them more efficiently, they can't, but to try to add further to the incomes of the rich by putting some of the massive amount of excess financial capital into something that pays a greater return than they get on bank deposits.
This is what you also voted for when you voted for Trump. Yes, he talks a good story on the trade deals, but his party and the Congress that they control, thanks to your votes, are dedicated to free trade and trade treaties that cost us jobs but which increase profits.
And this doesn't even touch on the insanity that we are going to have to fight to keep God out of our schools, the damage that will be done to the US Supreme Court, and the damage to the environment from ignoring global warming and from regulation reform that allows corporations to resume polluting, increasing their profits. They are certain to try to rollback the modest reforms put in place after the banks and Wall Street nearly destroyed the world's economy in 2008, giving us the certainty of a repeat of that fiasco in our future.
This is what you have supported with your vote.