[LINK] "Trump Can't Deliver the Rust Belt Jobs He Promised Because Work Has Changed"

[rfmcdonald]

Wired's Joseph Bien-Kahn notes that technological changes in the workplace make Trump's promises to restore the Rust Belt's jobs simply impossible.

On Election Night, voters in northeastern Ohio’s Trumbull and Ashtabula counties made Sean O’Brien—a three-term Democratic state representative—their state senator. They also helped make Donald Trump president. In 2012, 60 percent of Trumbull’s largely white, working class electorate voted for Barack Obama. In 2016, they flipped their support to the populist GOP candidate who offered his own promises for change.

The partisan shift surprised O’Brien, but he realized it shouldn’t have. Days before the election, O’Brien’s cousin snapped a photo of his own front yard and sent it to the soon-to-be state senator. A Trump sign stood right next to one supporting O’Brien.

“He didn’t expect a lot of what Trump promised, and yet he still voted for him,” O’Brien said. “Maybe he won’t bring jobs back, but at least it’s somebody new, it’s somebody outside. It’s somebody who’s talking his talk, their talk, our constituents’ talk.”

In the Rust Belt, that talk is all about the factories that left and the jobs that went with them. Trump succeeded in places like Trumbull and Ashtabula by convincing voters he’d truly fight to bring back their factory work. He promised to rip up trade deals, punish currency manipulators, and make it harder to outsource jobs. This was change Rust Belt voters at least wanted to believe in.

But Trump will enter office with the nearly impossible challenge of rebuilding a sector of the economy that technology has altered at least as much as globalization has. To help the constituents who were instrumental in electing him, he’ll need to get a GOP Congress to back policies at stark odds with conservative orthodoxy. Even then, the implacable forces of automation guarantee that whatever jobs may return to the Rust Belt won’t look like those of days gone by.