What happened to American manufacturing is not unusual

President Trump’s chaotic implementation of new tariffs has roiled markets and wrecked decades of international cooperation and free trade agreements. At the heart of these actions, and one of the motivating forces of his political movement, is the belief that the de-industrialization of the U.S. economy can somehow be reversed by protectionist trade policies. Unfortunately, this is not going to work. Manufacturing’s share of the U.S. economy has been falling since the 1940s. While the decline has slowed in the past decade, the shift has already devastated communities across the country that were previously dependent on manufacturing activity. But protectionist policies won’t bring back the jobs that have been lost. The decline of the manufacturing sector isn’t a specific thing that happened just in the United States. It has happened in every developed country so far. The chart below shows how three main sectors of the economy evolve as economies become richer: Agriculture’s share o ... Read full article.