Trumponomics in post-industrial America: understanding the causes of deindustrialization and its role in the emergence of right-wing populist economics
Subject
Honors Theses; Economics; Deindustrialization; Manufacturing; Employment; China; Donald Trump; Automation; Services sector; Post-industrialism; Right-wing populism; Research Subject Categories::SOCIAL SCIENCES::Business and economicsAbstract
Since 2001, the American economy has swiftly shed over six million manufacturing jobs. To this
day, large swaths of the American rural working class are left struggling to compete with
domestic and external forces that are driving American labor away from the production process
altogether. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding this economic phenomenon is dominated
by politicians pointing fingers across the Pacific towards China and their ‘unfair’ trade practices.
This technique of political and economic scapegoating was heralded by Donald J. Trump who
emerged onto the American political stage with the immediate incrimination of China in the
economic woes of the American working class. Although the American trade deficit with China
is an often cited cause of American deindustrialization, are there other factors at play? To what
extent can the increasingly widespread variables of automation and service growth explain the
“hollowing out” of the American manufacturing sector? Additionally, to what degree is Donald
Trump’s anti-globalist and economic nationalist rhetoric responsible for his shocking electoral
win in 2016? I explore these topics together and illustrate the troubling recent shifts in the
American labor force as well as the American electorate.
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