Comment by rainsford

That all seems built on some romantic notion that a job making physical objects ("working with their hands") is fundamentally better than a job providing a service ("staring at screens"). But it's not obvious there is a lot of factual support for the idea, either on the level of individual jobs or the economy as a whole. You could certainly use protectionist barriers or subsidies to try to force industries like ship building back to the US, but would the US really be economically better off overall if you did so?

That said, it's really irrelevant since Trump's current approach isn't looking to support specific industries or outcomes, it's just across the board tariffs on everything. We're not just going to have to build our own ships or cars, but grow our own coffee and bananas. Targeted, strategic tariffs and subsidies on the industries we want to support could be arguable, but this is not that.