Neglected workforce needs aid from D.C.

Trump has options to help manufacturing employees

Several voting blocs were responsible for electing Donald Trump as president. However, in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, this voting bloc was manufacturing workers whose real incomes have been in decline for three decades.

In Kentucky and West Virginia, coal miners were an important voting bloc. Trump was the last ray of hope for those left behind by the global digital economy and ignored by Washington elites who found serving the interests of big business and education elites had a higher payoff.

Twenty-four years were wasted while Republican and Democratic presidents ignored the demise of the old-style manufacturing and mining workforces. Trump has four years to make immense progress in changing the economic trajectory of these workers.

So what can Trump do to aid these long-neglected workforces?

Even if the Trump-led U.S. gross domestic product doubles its growth rate to 4 percent/year, that would be insufficient to help these workers because trickle-down has been leak-proofed. Furthermore, accelerated GDP growth would continue to take place in cities with thriving economic ecosystems, not in small towns formerly supported by old-style manufacturing.

Nevertheless, it is important that the corporate tax structure be overhauled to expedite economic growth and make the United States more attractive to newstyle manufacturing companies.

New ideas are needed. Four follow.

1. Solve problems impacting the middle class.

The middle class has been especially hurt by shifting of wealth from the middle class to the rich, rising health care and college costs, the cost of regulations on small business, crime and decline in entrepreneurship. The U.S. has a massive federal research and development mafia focused in the physical sciences that should be redirected to solve these socioeconomic problems.

2. Fill infrastructure jobs with old-style manufacturing workers.

The federal government should start a new program in partnership with states to retrain manufacturing and mining workers so they can conduct infrastructure work supported by the Trump administration. Interestingly, the American Society of Civil Engineers has campaigned for a national infrastructure program for well over 20 years.

3. Fill new-style manufacturing jobs with U.S. citizens.

Some firms have already brought their manufacturing back to the U.S., but the manufacturing that is returning is not labor intensive and it involves the disciplines of smart manufacturing, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics, automated manufacturing and other advanced manufacturing disciplines. The old-style manufacturing workforce is not prepared to contribute in this newstyle, digital manufacturing environment.

Instead of training U.S. workers for these jobs, U.S. companies have relied heavily on immigrant workers with H1b visas and lobbied Congress to increase the H1b workforce from 65,000 per year to 185,000 per year.

Manufacturing companies willing to employ U.S. students in cooperative engineering, IT and technology jobs and direct their on-the-job manufacturing education should be permitted to pay students’ undergraduate tuition and deduct those education costs from corporate taxes. The practical work experience would be a major element of the students’ education; the certainty of immediate and secure employment and a tuition-free education would attract more U.S. students to study engineering, IT and technology.

4. Provide relocation incentives to move workers to economic ecosystems jobs.

There are U.S. cities with talented local leadership building economic ecosystems that have annual GDP growth near 4 percent. However, housing and living costs have so escalated in these cities that it is very difficult for workers to relocate. Employers and employees need financial incentives to relocate workers from stagnant economies to cities with high rates of job creation and GDP growth.