Lutnik's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Vision

While Trump was golfing this weekend, all administration surrogates were sent to the TV networks, and some of them went to not-completely-safe spaces. For example, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, who seems like one of the dumber Trump appointees (I know, lots of competition) was on Face the Nation. He said a lot of dumb stuff, but I found this interesting:

Lutnik speedtalks over Brennan, but she asks the right questions. Jamelle Bouie made a good observation about this:

That’s one point. A second point is that Apple is exceptionally good at manufacturing automation, and iPhones are still assembled by hand because they found that robots couldn’t do the job as well. Plus, if we’re going to have robotic factories, we need factories to build the robots first. So this isn’t going to happen overnight, if ever.

The other thing about this is that Lutnik knows nothing about what it takes to be a mechanic, HVAC technician or electrician. I have relatives who do some of those jobs, and after they graduated from high school, they went to community college or trade school. These jobs are hard. The people who fix my furnace, fix the cable internet, and repair my car work on computerized, complex machines that require multidisciplinary knowledge. I talk with them when they’re fixing stuff, and they’re generally pretty damn bright. They are also self-directed: the HVAC and cable companies send them out on their own to do jobs that might require physical labor (in the case of cable, climbing a pole), plus understanding of some complex computer and electronics theory. I’m often amazed at what they accomplish.

Lutnick clearly thinks they’re a dime a dozen. That’s a fantasy. The reality: since these jobs are difficult, there aren’t enough people to do them. The Republican Party’s ability to get aimless young men to go to polls seems to make them think that these men will somehow staff their factories in jobs that require technical degrees. It’s nice to see the Republicans falling for this for once — usually it’s the Democrats who want to turn everyone into coders or HVAC techs.

Here’s the truth: almost everyone who has the ability and gumption to code, work HVAC, be an electrician or a mechanic already codes, works HVAC, is an electrician or works as a mechanic. They aren’t holding out tin cups on street corners singing “Once I built a railroad.”

And, even with Trump’s tariffs, the math doesn’t work. As someone observed on BlueSky (can’t find it), if a factory in Vietnam can turn out $2 t-shirts, and tariffs make them cost $2.50, Wal-Mart still isn’t going to buy them from a factory in West Virginia that produces them for $10 or $15. Apple isn’t going to go through the hell of moving their iPhone factories back to the US to pay US workers to drive in screws since the screw robots haven’t been invented yet, because US workers will need to be paid more, and it will take years to build the factory.

Manufacturing jobs generally suck: they’re repetitive and dehumanizing. They went overseas for reasons that made sense to the manufacturers: US citizens didn’t want them, they’re better than the alternative in developing countries, and US companies can treat workers poorly in those countries. Also, there aren’t any unions in those countries.

Lutnik made his money at Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage house, where his big innovation was fast electronic trading. His knowledge of manufacturing is nonexistent, and it shows.