How California’s crisis could lead to a big political shift



California’s wide range of problems — including declining schools, widening inequality, rising housing prices, and a weak job market — shows the urgent need for reform. The larger question is whether there exists a will to change.

Although the state’s remarkable entrepreneurial economy has kept it afloat, a growing number of residents are concluding that the progressive agenda, pushed by public unions and their well-heeled allies, is failing. Most Californians have an exceptional lack of faith in the state’s direction. Only 40% of California voters approve of the legislature, and almost two-thirds have told pollsters the state is heading in the wrong direction. That helps explain why California residents — including about 1.1 million since 2021 — have been fleeing to other states.

California needs a movement that can stitch together a coalition of conservatives, independents, and, most critically, moderate Democrats.

Unhappiness with the one-party state is particularly intense in the inland areas, which are the only locales now growing and may prove critical to any resurgence. More troubling still, over 70% of California parents feel their children will do less well than they did. Four in 10 are considering an exit. By contrast, seniors, thought to be leaving en masse, are the least likely to express a desire to leave.

In some ways, discontent actually erodes potential support for reform. Conservative voters, notes a recent study, are far more likely to express a desire to move out of the state; the most liberal are the least likely. “Texas is taking away my voters,” laments Shawn Steel, California’s Republican National Committee member.

New awakenings

Given the demographic realities, a successful drive for reform cannot be driven by a marginalized GOP. Instead, what’s needed is a movement that can stitch together a coalition of conservatives, independents (now the state’s second-largest political grouping), and, most critically, moderate Democrats.

Remarkably, this shift has already begun in an unlikely place: the ultra-liberal, overwhelmingly Democratic Bay Area. For years, its most influential residents — billionaires, venture capitalists, and well-paid tech workers — have abetted or tolerated an increasingly ineffective and corrupt regime. Not only was the area poorly governed, but the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and other cities have become scenes of almost Dickensian squalor.

Over the past two years, tech entrepreneurs and professionals concerned about homelessness and crime worked to get rid of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin. Last year, they helped elect Dan Lurie, scion of the Levi Strauss fortune, as mayor, as well as some more moderate members to the board of supervisors. Lurie, of course, faces a major challenge to restore San Francisco’s luster against entrenched progressives and their allies in the media, academia, and the state’s bureaucracy.

Similar pushbacks are evident elsewhere. Californians, by large majorities, recently passed bills to strengthen law enforcement, ditching liberalized sentencing laws passed by Democratic lawmakers and defended by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Progressive Democrats have been recalled not only in San Francisco but also in Oakland (Alameda County) and Los Angeles, with voters blaming ideology-driven law enforcement for increasing rates of crime and disorder.

Critically, the liberal elites are not the only ones breaking ranks. Pressure for change is also coming from increasingly conservative Asian voters and Jews — who number more than 1 million in the state and largely are revolted by the anti-Semitism rife among some on the progressive left. Protecting property and economic growth is particularly critical to Latino and Asian immigrants — California is home to five of the 10 American counties with the most immigrants — who are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans.

These minority entrepreneurs and those working for them are unlikely to share the view of progressive intellectuals, who see crime as an expression of injustice and who often excused or even celebrated looting during the summer of 2020. After all, it was largely people from “communities of color” who have borne the brunt of violent crime in cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. Minorities also face special challenges doing business here due to regulations that are especially burdensome on smaller, less capitalized businesses. According to the Small Business Regulation Index, California has the worst business climate for small firms in the nation.

The shift among minority voters could prove a critical game-changer, both within the Democratic Party and the still-weak GOP. In Oakland, for example, many minorities backed the removal of Mayor Sheng Thao (D), a progressive committed to lenient policing in what is now California’s most troubled, if not failed, major city.

Latinos, already the state’s largest ethnic group, constituting about 37.7% of the workforce, with expectations of further growth by 2030, seem to be heading toward the right. In the last presidential election, Trump did well in the heavily Latino inland counties and won the “Inland Empire” — the metropolitan area bordering Los Angeles and Orange Counties – the first time a GOP presidential candidate has achieved this in two decades.

Back to basics

After a generation of relentless virtue-signaling, California’s government needs to focus on the basic needs of its citizens: education, energy, housing, water supply, and public safety. As a widely distributed editorial by a small business owner noted, Californians, especially after highly publicized fire response failures in Los Angeles earlier this year, are increasingly willing to demand competent “basic governance” backed by a “ruthless examination of results” to ensure that their government supports “modest aspirations” for a better life.

California once excelled in basic governance, especially in the 1950s and '60s under Democratic Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. The state managed to cultivate growth while meeting key environmental challenges, starting in the late 1960s, most notably chronic air pollution. In what is justifiably hailed as a “major success,” California helped pioneer clean air regulatory approaches that have vastly reduced most automotive tailpipe emissions as well as eliminated lead and dramatically cut sulfur levels.

All of this starkly contrasts with the poor planning, execution, and catastrophist science evoked to justify the state’s climate agenda. Even Pat Brown’s son, former Gov. Jerry Brown (D), recognized that California has little effect on climate. Given the global nature of the challenge, reducing one state’s emissions by cutting back on industrial activities accomplishes little if those activities move elsewhere, often to locations with fewer restrictions such as China and India.

Rather than focusing on “climate leadership,” Sacramento needs to tackle the immediate causes of record out-migration, including sluggish economic growth and the nation’s highest levels of poverty and homelessness. The great challenges are not combatting global temperature rises but the housing crisis and the need to diversify the economy and improve the failing education system. As these problems have often been worsened by climate policies, there seems little reason for other states and countries to adopt California’s approach as a model.

halbergman via iStock/Getty Images

Fixing housing

California now has the nation’s second-lowest home ownership rate at 55.9%, slightly above New York (55.4%). High interest rates that have helped push home sales to the lowest level in three decades across the country are particularly burdensome in coastal California metros, where prices have risen to nearly 400% above the national average. The government almost owned up to its role in creating the state’s housing crisis — especially through excessive housing regulations and lawfare on developers — earlier this year when Newsom moved to cut red tape so homes could be rebuilt after the Los Angeles fires.

Current state policy — embraced by Yes in My Backyard activists, the greens, and unions — focuses on dense urban development. Projects are held up, for example, for creating too many vehicle miles traveled, even though barely 3.1% of Californians in 2023 took public transit to work, according to the American Community Survey. As a result, much “affordable” development is being steered to densely built areas that have the highest land prices. This is made worse with mandates associated with new projects, such as green building codes and union labor, that raise the price per unit to $1 million or more.

A far more enlightened approach would allow new growth to take place primarily outside city centers in interior areas where land costs are lower and where lower-cost, moderate-density new developments could flourish. These include areas like Riverside/San Bernardino, Yolo County (adjacent to Sacramento), and Solano County, east of San Francisco Bay. This approach would align with the behavior of residents who are already flocking to these areas because they provide lower-income households, often younger black and Latino, with the most favorable home ownership opportunities in the state.Over 71% of all housing units in the Inland Empire are single-family homes, and the aggregate ownership rate is over 63%, far above the state’s dismal 45.8% level.

Without change, the state is socially, fiscally, and economically unsustainable. California needs to return to attracting the young, talented, and ambitious, not just be a magnet for the wealthy or super-educated few.

More than anything, California needs a housing policy that syncs with the needs and preferences of its people, particularly young families. Rather than being consigned to apartments, 70% of Californians prefer single-family residences. The vast majority oppose legislation written by Yes in My Backyard hero Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener banning single-family zoning in much of the state.

Investment in the interior is critical for recreating the old California dream for millions of aspiring households, particularly among minorities who are being driven out of the home ownership market in the coastal metropolitan areas. The only California metropolitan area ranked by the National Association of Realtors as a top 10 pick for Millennials was not hip San Francisco or glamorous Los Angeles, but the more affordable historically “redneck” valley community of Bakersfield.

The numerous housing bills passed by Sacramento have not improved the situation. From 2010 to 2023, permits for single-family homes in California fell to a monthly average of 3,957 units from 8,529 during 1993-2006. California’s housing stock rose by just 7.9% between 2010 and 2023, lower than the national increase (10.3%) and well below housing growth in Arizona (13.8%), Nevada (14.7%), Texas (24%), and Florida (16.2%).

A more successful model can be seen in Texas, which generally advances market-oriented policies that have generated prodigious growth in both single-family and multi-family housing. This has helped the Lone Star State meet the housing needs of its far faster-growing population. A building boom has slowed, and there’s been some healthy decrease in prices in hot markets like Austin. Opening up leased grazing land in state and federal parks — roughly half the state land is owned by governments — could also relieve pressure on land prices. Until California allows for housing that people prefer, high prices and out-migration will continue into the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, California has room to grow, despite the suggestions by some academics that the state is largely “built out.”In reality, California is not “land short,” either in its cities or across its vast interior. Urbanization covers only 5.3% of the state, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, while parks, agricultural land, deserts, and forests make up the bulk of the area.

Diversifying the economy

Even Jerry Brown has remarked that the “Johnny one note” tech economy the state’s tax base depends on could stumble. This would reduce the huge returns on capital gains from the top 1% of filers, who now account for roughly half of all state income tax revenues. This overreliance may be particularly troublesome in the era of artificial intelligence, where tech companies may continue to expand but have less need for people. Indeed, San Francisco County, which boasts many tech jobs, experienced the nation’s largest drop in average weekly wages, 22.6%, between 2021 and 2022.

To expand opportunity and, hence, its tax base, California has to make more of the state attractive to employers. The best prospects, again, will be in inland areas.Today, when firms want to build spaceships, a clear growth industry where California retains significant leadership, as well as battery plants and high-tech and food processing facilities, they often opt to go to Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, and Texas. Given lower land and housing costs, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, as well as spots on the Central Coast, should be ideally situated to compete for those jobs.

The current economic pattern creates a situation where AI developers, elite engineers, and venture capitalists may enjoy unprecedented profits, but relatively little trickles down to the mass of Californians. Not all Californians have wealthy parents to subsidize their lifestyle, and few are likely to thrive as AI engineers. To address the dilemmas facing the next generation of Californians, the state needs to focus not just on ephemera, software, and entertainment but on bringing back some of the basic industries that once forged the California dream. In this way, President Trump’s policies could actually help the state, particularly in fields like high-tech defense and space.

In the 1940s, California played a key role in the American “arsenal of democracy.” Today, it could do the same, not so much by producing planes and Liberty ships, but drones, rockets, and space-based defense systems. Indeed, there are now discussions of reviving the state’s once-vaunted shipbuilding industry that buoyed the economy of Solano County — something sure to inspire the ire of the Bay Area’s rich and powerful environmental lobby.

Photo by Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Improving education

Climate and environmentalism are not the only barriers to California’s revival. No problem is more pressing and consequential than the state’s failure to educate California’s 5.9 million public school children. In fiscal year 2023-2024, California will spend about $128 billion on K-12 public education — an amount exceeding the entire budget of every other state except New York. Despite this level of spending, about 75% of California students lack proficiency in core subject areas based on federal education standards.

Two out of three California students do not meet math standards, and more than half do not meet English standards on state assessments. Overall, less than half of California public school students performed at or above grade level for English language arts (reading, writing, etc.), while only 34.62% met or exceeded the math standard on the Smarter Balanced 2023 tests. The failures are particularly clear among minority students. According to the latest California testing results, only 36.08% of Latino students met or exceeded proficiency standards for English language arts. Only 22.69% met or exceeded proficiency standards in math. Latino students, for example, in Florida and Texas do somewhat better in both math and English, even though both states spend less per capita on education than California.

Not surprisingly, many parents object to a system where half of the state’s high school students barely read at grade level. One illustration of discontent has been the growth of the charter school movement. Today, one in nine California schoolchildren attend charter schools (including my younger daughter). The state’s largest school district, the heavily union-dominated Los Angeles Unified School District, has lost roughly 40% of its enrollment over two decades, while the number of students in charters grew from 140,000 in 2010 to 207,000 in 2022.

In addition to removing obstacles to charters, homeschoolers are part of the solution. California homeschool enrollment jumped by 78% in the five-year period before the pandemic and in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 89%. Equally important, some public districts and associated community colleges, as in Long Beach, have already shifted toward a more skills-based approach. Public officials understand that to keep a competitive edge, they need to supply industrial employers with skilled workers. This is all the more crucial as the aerospace workforce is aging — as much as 50% of Boeing’s workforce will be eligible for retirement in five years. In its quest for relevance, Long Beach’s educational partnership addresses the needs of the city’s industrial and trade sectors.

This approach contrasts with the state’s big push to make students take an ethnic studies course designed to promote a progressive and somewhat anti-capitalist, multicultural agenda. They will also be required to embrace the ideology of man-made climate change even if their grasp of basic science is minimal. A “woke” consciousness or deeper ethnic affiliations will not lead to student success later in life. What will count for the students and for California’s economy is gaining the skills that are in demand. You cannot run a high-tech lathe, manage logistics, or design programs for space vehicles with ideology.

More to come

Conventional wisdom on the right considers California to be on the road to inexorable decline. Progressives, not surprisingly, embrace the Golden State as a model while ignoring the regressive, ineffective policies that have driven the state toward a feudal future.

Yet both sides are wrong. California’s current progressive policies have failed, but if the state were governed correctly, it could resurge in ways that would astound the rest of the country and the world. Change is not impossible. As recent elections showed, Californians do not reflexively vote for progressives if they feel their safety or economic interests are on the line.

If change is to come in California, it may not be primarily driven by libertarian or conservative ideologies but by stark realities. Over two-thirds of California cities do not have any funds set aside for retiree health care and other expenses. Twelve of the state’s 15 large cities are in the red, and for many, it is only getting worse. The state overall suffers $1 trillion in pension debt, notes former Democratic state Rep. Joe Nation. U.S. News and World Report places California, despite the tech boom, 42nd in fiscal health among the states. This pension shortfall makes paying for infrastructure, or even teacher salaries, extraordinarily difficult at the state and local levels.

Without change, the state is socially, fiscally, and economically unsustainable, even if a handful of people get very rich and the older homeowners, public employees, and high-end professionals thrive. California needs to return to attracting the young, talented, and ambitious, not just be a magnet for the wealthy or super-educated few.

This can only happen if the state unleashes the animal spirits that long drove its ascendancy. The other alternative may be a more racial, class-based radicalism promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America and their allies. They have their own “cure” for California’s ills. We see this in debates over rebuilding Los Angeles, with progressives pushing for heavily subsidized housing, as with the case of the redevelopment of the Jordan Downs public housing complex, while seeking to densify and expand subsidized housing to once solidly affluent areas like the Palisades.

California has survived past crises — earthquakes and the defense and dot-com busts — and always has managed to reinvent itself. The key elements for success — its astounding physical environment, mild climate, and a tradition for relentless innovation — remain in place, ready to be released once the political constraints are loosened.

Fifty years ago, in her song “California,” Canada-reared Joni Mitchell captured the universal appeal of our remarkable state, not just its sunshine, mountains, and beaches, but also how it gave its residents an unprecedented chance to meet their fondest aspirations. Contrasting her adopted home with the sheer grayness of life elsewhere, she wrote, “My heart cried out for you, California / Oh California, I’m coming home.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Trump’s trade tactics echo founding-era common sense



Prominent voices on the left and within movement conservatism have argued that President Trump’s approach to foreign trade is strange, unorthodox, and even un-American. This is not surprising. After all, doctrinaire commitment to free trade — and doctrinaire distaste for protecting American industry — has been the dominant view among elites of both major political parties for at least a generation.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Trump’s actions on trade appear as a wholly irrational disruption of a system that, according to our political elites, does not need to be discarded.

Hamilton would find it perfectly sensible of Trump to hold that other nations should give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market.

This view of the matter, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of the American political tradition. Trump’s approach to trade policy has deep roots in American history, as we can see if we cast our gaze further back than we are accustomed to doing. It does not go too far to say that America’s founders would find Trump’s approach to international commerce perfectly intelligible and respectable.

The most obvious way to link President Trump to the founders is to invoke the justly celebrated name of Alexander Hamilton. The “Report on Manufactures,” Hamilton’s most famous state paper during his tenure as George Washington’s treasury secretary, laid out policy objectives that are essentially the same as those being defended by Trump and the members of his Cabinet who are responsible for trade policy.

It was necessary, Hamilton contended, to exert the government’s authority to promote American manufacturing to counteract the “artificial policy” of other nations that sought to exclude or disadvantage American goods. The ultimate aim of such a policy, he explained, was not the “vain project of selling everything and buying nothing” — it was instead to secure America’s vital national interests.

Hamilton argued that national “independence and security” are the “great objects” of all governments, thus requiring each country to “possess within itself all the essentials of national supply,” especially “the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense.” Having such goods available within one’s own country, he continued, “is necessary to the perfection of the body politic, to the safety as well as the welfare of the society.”

No strange departure

It is hard to see much daylight between Hamiltonian trade principles and President Trump’s desire to have the products necessary to American security and prosperity built in the United States.

The nationalist character of Hamilton’s thinking about trade policy, moreover, did not emerge after the founding as some strange departure from its essential principles. Rather, such nationalism was evident earlier, especially in the prominent part Hamilton played in the debates over the ratification of the Constitution.

Writing in "The Federalist Papers," Hamilton observed that one of the great advantages of a union of states under one government was the power it would confer on the nation to “oblige foreign countries to bid against each other for the privileges of our markets.” Elsewhere in “The Federalist Papers,” Hamilton suggested that the restrictive trade policies nations sometimes pursue are not properly viewed as “injuries” but simply as “justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest.”

Hamilton, then, would find it perfectly sensible of President Trump to hold that other nations should be willing to give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market. His arguments similarly anticipated Trump’s frequent remarks that while other nations will inevitably act in their own interest, they likewise must understand that we intend to act in our own interest as well.

The preceding argument is enough to show that Trump’s thinking about trade policy has venerable roots in the American political tradition. After all, who is more American than Alexander Hamilton?

We can go further, however. Trump’s approach broadly represents not just the Hamiltonian strain of American economic nationalism but the common sense of the founding-era generation itself. Indeed (and as I have observed elsewhere at greater length) the authority to regulate trade with foreign nations was included in the Constitution precisely for the purposes for which the Trump administration is now wielding it.

Regulating commerce was uncontroversial

In his massive and highly regarded "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” Joseph Story — John Marshall’s great colleague on the early Supreme Court — observed that the power to regulate foreign commerce was so obviously necessary in a complete and effective government that it was hardly even a matter of controversy at the Constitutional Convention.

Commerce, Story suggested, is important to “the prosperity of nations.” Nevertheless, the prosperity of American commerce had been thwarted by the restrictive policies of other nations during the time America was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which conferred on the government no authority to regulate America’s foreign trade.

On Story’s telling, before the Constitution was adopted, American commerce “was regulated by foreign nations with a single view to their own interests; and our disunited efforts to counteract their restrictions were rendered impotent by a want of combination.” Under the Constitution, however, the government of the United States has the power to control access to the entire American market and hence has the ability to retaliate against the excessively self-regarding trade policies of other nations.

The Trump administration is simply using this constitutional power in an attempt to secure an arrangement that is more mutually beneficial for the United States and our trading partners.

Just as the founders anticipated

Story’s understanding of these matters was by no means idiosyncratic or partisan. On the contrary, essentially the same views were expressed by James Madison, the “father of the Constitution.”

Writing to James Monroe in 1785, Madison expressed his personal wish that “no regulations of trade, that is to say, no restrictions or imposts whatever, were necessary.” “A perfect freedom” of trade, he continued, “is the system which would be my choice.” Nevertheless, he immediately added, for such a system to be “attainable, all other nations must concur in it.” And if any other nation imposed restrictions on American trade, Madison continued, it would be appropriate for America to “retort the distinction” — in other words, to impose retaliatory restrictions of its own. Indeed, Madison held that to question the propriety of such economic retaliation would be “an affront to every citizen who loves his country.”

Similarly, in the preface to his notes on the Constitutional Convention, Madison observed that the lack of a commerce power under the Articles of Confederation had “produced in foreign nations ... a monopolizing policy injurious to the trade of the U.S.” and further suggested that the appropriate response would be a “countervailing policy on the part of the U. States.” Such a policy became possible because the new Constitution included a power to regulate trade with foreign nations — the power the Trump administration is wielding to secure more advantageous trade relations for America, just as the founders anticipated.

None of this is to say that the founders would have approved of the specific steps the Trump administration has taken in the last several weeks. No one can pretend to know how they would apply their principles to the changed circumstances of the present. Nor is it to say that the founders would approve the extent to which the Congress has delegated its foreign commerce power to the president. It is to say, however, that Trump’s aims, and the kind of tools he is using to achieve them, would be unobjectionable to those who founded our nation and established our form of government.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Why tariffs are the key to America’s industrial comeback



On April 2, President Trump announced a sweeping policy of reciprocal tariffs aimed at severing America’s economic dependence on China. His goal: to reshore American industry and restore national self-sufficiency.

How can the United States defend its independence while relying on Chinese ships, machinery, and computers? It can’t.

Tariffs aren’t just about economics. They are a matter of national survival.

But time is short. Trump has just four years to prove that tariffs can bring back American manufacturing. The challenge is steep — but not unprecedented. Nations like South Korea and Japan have done it. So has the United States in earlier eras.

We can do it again. Here’s how.

Escaping the altar of globalism

Tariffs were never just about economics. They’re about self-suffiency.

A self-sufficient America doesn’t depend on foreign powers for its prosperity — or its defense. Political independence means nothing without economic independence. America’s founders learned that lesson the hard way: No industry, no nation.

The entire supply chain lives offshore. America doesn’t just import chips — it imports the ability to make them. That’s a massive strategic vulnerability.

During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers weren’t the only threat. British factories were just as dangerous. The colonies relied on British imports for everything from textiles to muskets. Without manufacturing, they had no means to wage war.

Victory only became possible when France began supplying the revolution, sending over 80,000 firearms. That lifeline turned the tide.

After the Revolution, George Washington wrote:

A free people ought not only to be armed, but ... their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

Washington’s first major legislative achievement was the Tariff Act of 1789. Two years later, Alexander Hamilton released his “Report on Manufactures,” a foundational blueprint for American industrial strategy. Hamilton didn’t view tariffs as mere taxes — he saw them as the engine for national development.

For nearly two centuries, America followed Hamilton’s lead. Under high tariffs, the nation prospered and industrialized. In fact, the U.S. maintained the highest average tariff rates in the 19th century. By 1870, America produced one-quarter of the world’s manufactured goods. By 1945, it produced half. The United States wasn’t just an economic powerhouse — it was the world’s factory.

That changed in the 1970s. Washington elites embraced globalism. The result?

America has run trade deficits every year since 1974. The cumulative total now exceeds $25 trillion in today’s dollars.

Meanwhile, American companies have poured $6.7 trillion into building factories, labs, and infrastructure overseas. And as if outsourcing weren’t bad enough, foreign governments and corporations have stolen nearly $10 trillion worth of American intellectual property and technology.

The consequences have been devastating.

Since the 1980s, more than 60,000 factories have moved overseas — to China, Mexico, and Europe. The result? The United States has lost over 5 million well-paying manufacturing jobs.

This industrial exodus didn’t just hollow out factories — it gutted middle-class bargaining power. Once employers gained the ability to offshore production, they no longer had to reward rising productivity with higher wages. That historic link — more output, more pay — was severed.

Today, American workers face a brutal equation: Take the deal on the table, or the job goes to China. The “race to the bottom” isn’t a slogan. It’s an economic policy — and it’s killing the American middle class.

Offshoring has crippled American industry, turning the United States into a nation dependent on foreign suppliers.

Technology offers the clearest example. In 2024, the U.S. imported $763 billion in advanced technology products. That includes a massive trade deficit in semiconductors, which power the brains of everything from fighter jets to toasters. If imports stopped, America would grind to a halt.

Worse, America doesn’t even make the machines needed to produce chips. Photolithography systems — critical to chip fabrication — come from the Netherlands. They’re shipped to Taiwan, where the chips are made and then sold back to the U.S.

The entire supply chain lives offshore. America doesn’t just import chips — it imports the ability to make them. That’s not just dependency. That’s a massive strategic vulnerability.

And the problem extends far beyond tech. The U.S. imports its steel, ball bearings, cars, and oceangoing ships. China now builds far more commercial vessels than the United States — by orders of magnitude.

How can America call itself a global power when it can no longer command the seas?

What happens if China stops shipping silicon chips to the U.S.? Or if it cuts off something as basic as shoes or light bulbs? No foreign power should hold that kind of leverage over the American people. And while China does, America isn’t truly free. No freer than a newborn clinging to a bottle. Dependence breeds servitude.

Make America self-sufficient again

Trump has precious little time to prove that reindustrializing America isn’t just a slogan — it’s possible. But he won’t get there with half-measures. “Reciprocal” tariffs? That’s a distraction. Pausing tariffs for 90 days to sweet-talk foreign leaders? That delays progress. Spooking the stock market with mixed signals? That sabotages momentum.

To succeed, Trump must start with one urgent move: establish high, stable tariffs — now, not later.

Tariffs must be high enough to make reshoring profitable. If it’s still cheaper to build factories in China or Vietnam and just pay a tariff, then the tariff becomes little more than a tax — raising revenue but doing nothing to bring industry home.

What’s the right rate? Time will tell, but Trump doesn’t have time. He should impose immediate overkill tariffs of 100% on day one to force the issue. Better to overshoot than fall short.

That figure may sound extreme, but consider this: Under the American System, the U.S. maintained average tariffs above 30% — without forklifts, without container ships, and without globalized supply chains. In modern terms, we’d need to go higher just to match that level of protection.

South Korea industrialized with average tariffs near 40%. And the Koreans had key advantages — cheap labor and a weak currency. America has neither. Tariffs must bridge the gap.

Just as important: Tariffs must remain stable. No company will invest trillions to reindustrialize the U.S. if rates shift every two weeks. They’ll ride out the storm, often with help from foreign governments eager to keep their access to American consumers.

President Trump must pick a strong, flat tariff — and stick to it.

This is our last chance

Tariffs must also serve their purpose: reindustrialization. If they don’t advance that goal, they’re useless.

Start with raw materials. Industry needs them cheap. That means zero tariffs on inputs like rare earth minerals, iron, and oil. Energy independence doesn’t come from taxing fuel — it comes from unleashing it.

Next, skip tariffs on goods America can’t produce. We don’t grow coffee or bananas. So taxing them does nothing for American workers or factories. It’s a scam — a cash grab disguised as policy.

Tariff revenue should fund America’s comeback. Imports won’t vanish overnight, which means revenue will flow. Use it wisely.

Cut taxes for domestic manufacturers. Offer low-interest loans for large-scale industrial projects. American industry runs on capital — Washington should help supply it.

A more innovative use of tariff revenue? Help cover the down payments for large-scale industrial projects. American businesses often struggle to raise capital for major builds. This plan fixes that.

Secure the loans against the land, then recoup them with interest when the land sells. It’s a smart way to jump-start American reindustrialization and build capital fast.

But let’s be clear: Tariffs alone won’t save us.

Trump must work with Congress to slash taxes and regulations. America needs a business environment that rewards risk and investment, not one that punishes it.

That means rebuilding crumbling infrastructure — railways, ports, power grids, and fiber networks. It means unlocking cheap energy from coal, hydro, and next-gen nuclear.

This is the final chance to reindustrialize. Another decade of globalism will leave American industry too hollowed out to recover. Great Britain was once the workshop of the world. Now it’s a cautionary tale.

Trump must hold the line. Impose high, stable tariffs. Reshore the factories. And bring the American dream roaring back to life.

The real American factory killer? It wasn’t automation



Dylan Matthews at Vox wants you to believe that robots — not China — killed American manufacturing. Even if tariffs reshore production, he argues, they won’t bring back jobs because machines have already taken them.

This is not just wrong. It’s an ideological defense of a decades-long policy failure.

The jobs lost to offshoring aren't just the five million factory jobs that disappeared — the number is likely more than double that. The real toll could exceed 10 million jobs.

Yes, American manufacturing has grown more productive over time. But increased productivity alone does not explain the loss of millions of jobs. The real culprit isn’t automation. It’s the collapse of output growth — a collapse driven by offshoring, trade deficits, and elite dogma dressed up as economic inevitability.

Ford’s logic

To understand what actually happened, start with Henry Ford.

In 1908, Ford launched the Model T. What set it apart wasn’t just its engineering. It was the price tag: $850, or about $21,000 in today’s dollars.

For the first time, middle-class Americans could afford a personal vehicle. Ford spent the next few years obsessing over how to cut costs even further, determined to put a car in every driveway.

In December 1913, he revolutionized manufacturing. Ford Motor Company opened the world’s first moving assembly line, slashing production time for the Model T from 12 hours to just 93 minutes.

Efficiency drove output. In 1914, Ford built 308,162 Model Ts — more than all other carmakers combined. Prices plummeted. By 1924, a new Model T cost just $260, or roughly $3,500 today — an 83% drop from the original price and far cheaper than any “affordable” car sold now.

This wasn’t just a business success. It was the dawn of the automobile age — and a triumph of American productivity.

Ford’s moving assembly line supercharged productivity — and yet, he didn’t lay off workers. He hired more. That seems like a paradox. It isn’t.

Dylan Matthews misses the point. Employment depends on the balance between productivity and output. Productivity is how much value a worker produces per hour. Output is the total value produced.

If productivity rises while output stays flat, you need fewer workers. But if output rises alongside productivity — or faster — you need more workers.

Picture a worker with a shovel versus one with an earthmover. The earthmover is more productive. But if the project doubles in size, you still need more hands, earthmovers or not.

This was Henry Ford’s insight. His assembly line made workers more productive, but it also let him build far more cars. The result? More jobs, not fewer.

That’s why America’s manufacturing employment didn’t peak in 1914, when people first warned that machines would kill jobs. It peaked in 1979 — because Ford’s logic worked for decades.

The vanishing act

Matthews says manufacturing jobs vanished because productivity rose. That’s half true.

The full story? America lost manufacturing jobs when the long-standing balance between output and productivity broke.

From 1950 to 1979, manufacturing employment rose because output grew faster than productivity. Factories produced more, and they needed more workers to do it.

But after 1980, that balance began to shift. Between 1989 and 2000, U.S. manufacturing output rose by 3.7% annually. Productivity rose even faster — 4.1%.

Result: flat employment. Factories became more efficient, but they didn’t produce enough extra goods to justify more hires.

In other words, jobs didn’t disappear because of robots. They disappeared because output stopped keeping pace.

The real collapse began in 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization. Over the next decade, U.S. manufacturing output crawled forward at just 0.4% a year. Meanwhile, productivity kept rising at 3.7%.

That gap — between how much we produced and how efficiently we produced it — wiped out roughly five million manufacturing jobs.

Matthews, like many of the economists he parrots, blames job loss on rising productivity. But that’s only half the story.

Productivity gains don’t kill jobs. Stagnant output does. From 1913 to 1979, American manufacturing employment grew steadily — even as productivity surged. Why? Because output kept up.

So what changed?

Output growth collapsed. And the trade deficit is the reason why.

Feeding the dragon

Since 1974 — and especially after 2001 — America’s domestic output growth slowed to a crawl, even as workers kept getting more productive. Why? Because we shipped thousands of factories overseas. Market distortions, foreign subsidies, and lopsided trade agreements made it profitable to offshore jobs to China and other developing nations.

The result: America now consumes far more than it produces. That gap shows up in our trade deficit.

In 2024, America ran a $918 billion net trade deficit — including services. That figure represents all the goods and services we bought but didn’t make. Someone else did — mostly China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union.

The trade deficit is a dollar-for-dollar reflection of offshore production. Instead of building it here, we import it.

How many jobs does that deficit cost us? The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that every billion dollars of GDP supports 5,000 to 5,500 jobs. At $918 billion, the deficit displaces between 4.6 and five million jobs — mainly in manufacturing.

That’s no coincidence. That’s the hollowing-out of the American economy.

We can’t forget that factories aren’t just job sites — they’re economic anchors. Like mines and farms, manufacturing plants support entire ecosystems of businesses around them. Economists call this the multiplier effect.

And manufacturing has one of the highest multipliers in the economy. Each factory job supports between 1.8 and 2.9 other jobs, depending on the industry. That means when a factory closes or moves offshore, the impact doesn’t stop at the plant gates.

The jobs lost to offshoring aren't just the five million factory jobs that disappeared — the number is likely more than double that. The real toll could exceed 10 million jobs.

That number is no coincidence. It matches almost exactly the number of working-age Americans the Bureau of Labor Statistics has written out of the labor force since 2006 — a trend I document in detail in my book, “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream.”

Bottom line: Dylan Matthews is wrong. Robots didn’t kill American manufacturing jobs. Elites did — with bad trade deals, blind ideology, and decades of surrender to global markets. It’s time to reverse course: not with nostalgia but with strategy, not with slogans but with tariffs.

Tariffs aren’t a silver bullet. But they’re a necessary start. They correct the market distortions created by predatory trade practices abroad and self-destructive ideology at home. They reward domestic investment. They restore the link between productivity, output, and employment.

In short, tariffs work.

Chinese factories are using TikTok  to work around retailers and tariffs — big brands say the videos are fake, sort of



Chinese factories are promoting themselves through TIkTok videos and asking American consumers to buy directly from them at a lower cost than retailers.

With President Trump recently raising tariffs on China to 245%, videos have gone viral in recent days of Chinese factories offering products in bulk and/or direct to the consumer from factories that say they supply U.S. retailers.

For example, factories claiming to supply Lululemon and Louis Vuitton have offered products at minimal costs.

As reported by the Independent, one video that garnered 10 million views said it was selling yoga pants from Lululemon for $5 instead of $100, the apparent listed price in the U.S.

Another video reportedly showed a man in a factory who claimed his Louis Vuitton bags can be sold directly to consumers across the world for $50.

Both companies reportedly told the outlet that their products are not finished in China, which raised the question of what "finished" means. Of course, many of these products and factories could be producing counterfeit products, but they also could legitimately be product suppliers that are meant to maximize profits for international retailers.

For Italian products to be labeled "100% Made in Italy" (according the official certification website), a product must be made with "exclusive designs" from Italy, built entirely in Italy, made with Italian semi-finished products, and a have a traceability process.

However, at least some of Louis Vuitton's products do not contain an official seal and simply say "made in Italy."

A Louis Vuitton handbag's tag that says 'made in Italy'

The Independent noted that it found at least one video that falsely claimed to be a Lululemon supplier. However, a Lululemon spokesperson told the outlet that just 3% or thereabouts of the company's finished goods are manufactured in mainland China.

The specific nature of the remark is indeed for a reason, as the provided list of manufacturing partners on the Lululemon website revealed that manufacturers from "China Mainland" were categorized separately from "Taiwan."

Other locations like Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka appeared many times on the list of partners.

Other widely circulated video included $100 alleged Gucci products sold for just $1.49, while another factory boasted laundry pods being sold at a rate of 20 units for $1.

One auto-parts factory promoted a woman in a grime-covered location around dozens of engines who sang, "Many auto parts in my factory, if you need auto parts you can find me."

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Trump’s ‘kind’ tariffs could bring millions of jobs back home



On April 2 — Liberation Day — President Donald Trump announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs, describing them as “kind” to foreign countries. Why? Because they were half the rate of foreign tariffs.

— (@)

Many were surprised by this. If tariffs are good, then more must be better, right? Why not raise them to match the foreign tariffs?

America has embraced the globalist experiment and paid the price.

Trump’s “kind” tariffs serve a deeper strategic purpose. They provide both a carrot and a stick to foreign suppliers: Foreign countries can lower or eliminate their tariffs, promoting free and fair trade — the carrot — or they will face the wrath of truly reciprocal tariffs in due course — the stick.

These tariffs will create millions of jobs in two main ways. First, reciprocal tariffs will be used as political leverage to open new markets for American exports. Second, tariffs will protect American jobs from the vicious cycle of offshoring and the global “race to the bottom.”

The carrot and the stick

Tariffs are not just a tax but a political tool that can be leveraged to achieve foreign policy objectives. Because America runs a trade deficit with much of the world — buying more than it sells — it wields immense consumer power. And as the saying goes, the buyer is always right.

By imposing tariffs at half the rate of foreign tariffs, Trump has given foreign nations a carrot. They now have the opportunity to reduce their own tariffs and engage in true, one-to-one trade with the United States. Contrary to anti-tariff critics, Trump is promoting fair and free trade, opening up new opportunities for American businesses.

Right now, foreign companies largely have free access to the U.S. market due to America’s historically low tariffs and relatively light regulatory burden. However, American companies face massive tariffs and complex regulations abroad, explicitly designed to keep them out.

Reciprocal tariffs will level the playing field. If foreign producers want access to America’s market — which they do — they must match U.S. tariffs. This will put American businesses on a more even footing, opening up foreign markets.

Take India, for example. India charges net tariff rates of 52% on American goods, effectively pricing U.S. products out of its market, even though Indian companies can sell products in America. Now, India has a choice — lower the tariffs or face Trump’s wrath. If India lowers tariffs, American companies will no longer be priced out of the Indian market, giving them access to over 1.4 billion potential customers and a consumer market worth nearly $15 trillion.

By opening up new markets, Trump’s tariffs can potentially create millions of new jobs — good manufacturing jobs with above-average salaries and benefits.

Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Thailand, have initiated trade talks to reduce their taxes on American products. Other countries will likely follow suit, provided Trump holds the line.

Tariffs will revive factories

The second way that tariffs will create jobs is by reshoring foreign factories to the United States. For five decades, America has embraced the globalist experiment. During that time, it has lost over six million manufacturing jobs — most of them since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization.

Additionally, America lost another estimated nine million service industry jobs. Why? Manufacturing is an anchor industry upon which service industries depend. Factories are like farms or mines — they bring wealth into a community. Without factories, there are fewer jobs for hairdressers, lawyers, or accountants.

Manufacturing has a job multiplier effect with downstream consequences. In total, America has lost an estimated 15 million jobs due to economic globalism and the trade deficit.

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will end the vicious offshoring cycle, which pits American workers against slave labor in the developing world — a competition that they cannot possibly win. Instead, foreign producers will reshore their factories and make their products in America.

In fact, it’s already happening. Last month, Hyundai announced a $21 billion investment in the United States, including a new steel plant in Louisiana. Depending on who is counting, up to $5 trillion in new capital investment has already been announced in relation to Liberation Day. This can potentially create millions of new jobs and secure America’s industrial base.

Trump’s tariffs are about more than economics. They send a statement to the world — and the American people — that we will no longer worship the golden calf of “cheap goods” and feckless consumption. Tariffs will secure America’s industrial base, protect our national security, provide jobs for American families, and bring wealth into our struggling communities.

Happy Liberation Day! Let's now look forward to reshoring our factories and reviving the American dream.