Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™.
The turmoil over tariffs has taken center stage since President Donald Trump has started to make good on his campaign promise to Make America Great Again. His latest move is leveraging the tactic of tariffs to help bring back manufacturing jobs that he believes have been outsourced to other countries and should be available to people in the United States. However, having the goal of quickly bringing industrialization to a country has been tried elsewhere before.
Mao Zedong of China, who formed the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and ran it until his death in 1976, tried what Trump is doing in the U.S. in China. It was called The Great Leap Forward and started in 1958. It aimed to change China from a country that relied on agriculture as its economic center to one that relied on industrialization instead. Similar to Donald Trump’s vision for industrialization, it included a focus on increasing the amount of steel manufacturing, which is the first step for industrialization in their eyes. Mao’s goal for steel production was to increase from 6.5 million tons of steel in 1958 to 20 million tons by 1959, which would double the nation’s production of steel. He also had a goal of overtaking Great Britain in steel production within 15 years, and then shortened it to an unrealistic two-three years. He set equally unrealistic goals for energy production and the production of commercial items such as cement and machine tools. As you can see, Trump and Mao embody the ethos of moving fast and breaking things that we have seen across the tech industry, and we have seen how that can create unforeseen consequences. Mao also used his position to transfer workers in villages focused on agriculture to work in either construction or steel production. He further criminalized private farming, preventing people from making a living in the industry and presenting construction and steel work as much more attractive.
The act of making other forms of work harder to do, so it makes other types of work more attractive to do, reminds me of Trump’s attack on U.S. institutions. As reported by Newsweek, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the laid-off federal workers could be the very people to fill the ranks of the manufacturing labor force. While I disagree with how Trump and his administration are going about the execution of increasing opportunities in manufacturing, I do agree that those opportunities would be beneficial to have more of — and I especially see it as a positive for the Black community.
The Black middle class was built on skilled labor, whether it was in automotive, manufacturing, or construction. Historically, we have seen our economic fortunes rise when there is a focus on industrialization. This would not only benefit Black people overall, but I believe would specifically change the tide for the better considering what is currently happening when it comes to the economic outcomes of Black men here in the United States.
As reported by The New York Times, there is an enrollment crisis at Howard University with Black men only making up 19% of the student body, which caused a lot of conversation online about the state of Black men and our futures. What I believe the focus on manufacturing could do is create another pipeline of economic opportunity that Black men could take advantage of. When people think about manufacturing, they tend to only focus on the jobs within the plants, but the focus creates career opportunities both within and outside of the plants. Jobs within plants, such as being a welder or machinist, are what comes to mind for most people, but the work has become much more technical. Some jobs, like being a semiconductor technician — which lives at the heart of AI — will become an automation technician job, and someone will install and maintain automation equipment. This will increasingly become an area of opportunity as more automation comes to manufacturing. These are examples of jobs that did not exist previously but are changing the future of working in manufacturing here in the U.S.
These jobs can help build up the Black middle class once again and would more than likely end up being most dense in the South and the Midwest, where Black people in the United States are most densely populated. They also would enable Black men to enter a field that is growing and one that commands a higher wage than working at an Amazon warehouse or doing gig work. Choosing this path over the others, I believe, would also lead to more sturdy families because this route would offer more stability, and stability is good for people — but it’s even better for families.
I do believe that the way that Trump is going about reshoring our manufacturing capacity is uninformed, dangerous, and lacks the level of execution we need to make it happen in the way it should. However, I do not believe that bringing more opportunities in manufacturing to communities here, especially ones that could benefit the Black community, is a bad goal, and I do hope it works. It would open up more options for opportunity, and having options is a great thing to have.
