I have no real objections to what Pomp has to say but he emphasizes a lot on the tech-heavy manufacturing side of things, when the US has plenty of other manufacturing that could benefit from these tariffs.

The main issue I see is being able to fill the low level manufacturing jobs in the wake of demand spikes. I’m an engineer/manager in the plastic industry (US) and since covid, it’s been impossible to fill low level positions because domestic manufactures already cant compete with overseas wages, or match any sort of schedule flexibility from the likes of independent contract work like DoorDash, etc. Americans simply don’t want to work these types of jobs anymore in my experience, and companies have their hands tied.

I’ve been working desperately over the last 4+ years modernizing operations and finding ways to ensure the company’s survival in the wake of labor shortages, but the nature of certain jobs makes it near impossible to automate further without significant CAPEX that doesn’t guarantee success.

Does Pomp imply that you automate or die? Is the writing on the wall that companies have no choice but to eliminate this low level work or risk being replaced by the next generation of manufacturing?