I disagree. We are no longer in the 1960s, so Americans do not want to work at an assembly line anymore, nor will they be able to provide for their family with that job like before. If you are a young man and are on a date, and you are asked about your job and respond that you assemble iPhones manually, good luck on your odds of a next date. The status of such jobs has changed, and I don't see that changing because a Boomer President thinks so.
To be clear, I believe some tariffs can be positive and justified.
What about restaurant servers, sales staff, construction workers, maids, janitors...? Don't tell me that America doesn't have anyone doing those jobs and all its citizens are office workers, engineers, doctors...or that they are all millionaires and doing high-level jobs.
If people are willing and able to do those jobs, there is no reason why they would refuse to work at an iPhone assembly plant. As long as you pay them a salary that is consistent with the cost of living in the US, there will always be people applying and working for you .
The question is can they really cut ties with China and be able to produce products at low prices to compete with goods from China , Europe or other countries...? I doubt it .
For a country that has traditionally relied heavily on imports and whose economy has operated that way for decades like the US. It will not be easy and quick for them to bring manufacturing back home .
This post comes across as extremely out of touch. Jobs at assembly plants tracking the cost of living? Do you know that in many parts of the U.S., an average house is about a half a million dollars? Sure, you could pay people a living wage in a factory, but the iPhone price will rise by many thousands of dollars. Are Americans ready to pay $4,000 for an iPhone? Then, you'd have to increase the pay even more to catch up, further driving up inflation.
We are no longer in the 1960s, when a single income from a factory job could support a family AND was respectable. Now, people working in a factory can barely afford to pay rent, and career women are refusing to date men who work those types of jobs. This is why young men have been fleeing the labor force by the way - the payoff is just not there, so they stay home and play video games, making money here and there through occasional side gigs.
The men who work the types of jobs you described are largely sexless and invisible today. Many people pushing for the reshoring of manufacturing - which I support in more reasonable increments, not with drastic policy changes and threats to allies abroad - would never do these types of jobs themselves.
