Hamiltonian Means, Jacksonian Ends: America's Economic Midlife Crisis 2.0
The Trump administration's attempt to reboot American manufacturing isn't just an economic strategy it's a nostalgic fever dream, complete with protectionist tariffs and industrial policy.
In the grand theatre of American economic reinvention, we're witnessing a tragicomedy of epic proportions. The Trump administration's attempt to reboot American manufacturing isn't just an economic strategy - it's a nostalgic fever dream, complete with protectionist tariffs and industrial policy that reads like a midlife crisis disguised as national policy. And it stars an ensemble cast of tech billionaires, policy wonks, and nostalgia merchants, now playing in the AI-adjacent reality of 2024.
Let's be clear: America isn't "making things great again" so much as trying to resurrect a romanticised past that never quite existed.
This is an attempt to recapture the mythical 1950’s middle-class lifestyle without the actual structural conditions that made it possible. Want the American dream? Sorry, you'll need powerful unions, not just MAGA hats. And the Maga 2016 is different from the Musk-infused Maga of 2020. Musk-infused MAGA seems to be harkening back to the 1870’s not the 1950’s. Perhaps more a nod to the power of the Dutton family than most others. But kudos to Sheridan Taylor!
Policies to build the industrial and manufacturing sectors by Biden and now by Trump could prove equally irrelevant. The numbers are brutally revealing. Out of 170 million working Americans, a mere 12 million are in manufacturing, with another 8 million in construction. That's not a base for societal transformation - that's an economic skeleton crew trying to sail a massive industrial battleship.
I mean as we learned in the pandemic there are national security and societal reasons to ensure we can produce more of our own goods and reimagining our manufacturing sector won’t bring a stable, steady pay check and a decent living to the majority of the American workforce because manufacturing jobs aren’t the be all and end all in the modern economy. But the go-fast-and break-things-as-often-as-you-can alcolytes aren’t taking the time to notice. And everyone else seems happy to not have an opinion. At least not one that they say out loud.
The original Hamiltonian vision sought to bind capital to place and political community. Today's version? Capital roams freely, with a sprinkle of billionaire tech overlords looking more like Bond villains than community leaders. Elon Musk isn't building communities; he's building a Jules Verne-style supervillain complex, complete with rockets, satellites, and a dystopian vision of work.
The quasi-centric, less revolutionary hand of Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn is long gone from the administration and it seems there is no other power centre in the current administration that voices any calming strategies. It's all off with their heads! Everywhere. All the time.
Remember the New Deal? Well they do and this crop of republican lawmakers are willing to push past their usual empty rhetoric railing on it to take down the safety net it built. From the Fed to Social Security. FDR used to say the New Deal wasn't just an economic policy - it was "revolution insurance."
Roosevelt essentially told the asset-rich: "Give workers some protections, or risk massive uprisings of the assetless class." Today's economic nationalists seem to be playing a dangerous game of chicken with similar stakes. Their politics and campaigning fetishise the working class while fundamentally serving billionaire interests.
It's a gig economy wrapped in populist packaging, promising manufacturing revival but delivering a future of AI-infused overlords.
Here's a brutal truth: Technology, not policy, drives economic transformation. We didn't become an agricultural powerhouse through wishful thinking, and we won't reindustrialise through tariffs and nostalgia. The real challenge isn't bringing back factory jobs. After all we can increase factory jobs by a few million (and that would be doing a great job) but it wouldn't make a big difference to our GDP or the real economy.
Factory jobs aren’t even 10% of the 170 million strong american workforce.
There’s 20 million people in the health sector. Another 17 million in leisure. And another 100 million wondering when AI will do everything they do only better, faster and cheaper. We need to reimagine the social contract to work for a diverse, predominantly service-sector workforce that will get increasingly screwed by AI. The pandemic exposed global supply chain vulnerabilities, sure. But the solution isn't just "make everything in America." It's building adaptive, resilient economic systems that recognise the fundamental shifts in labour and technology but still support the population and keep them able to live productive happy lives.
In a delightful historical twist, today's economic nationalists are essentially channelling Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic party. A man who loved breaking established systems without a clear plan for what comes next. Break the bank, disrupt the labour board, undermine unions - all while claiming to champion the working class. It wouldn’t be until FDR's election that the American working class found its footing.
Jackson presided over a policy approach that looked more like economic vandalism than strategic rebuilding. The Trump admin, his Doge unit, the Project 2025 writers are all working to the same score sheet. Our techno-populists use Jackson's strategic economic framework as a sledgehammer, breaking and hollowing out government. Amid this cynical landscape, there's a glimmer of hope.
Democracy and political input remain our best tools for navigating technological disruption. The New Deal wasn't perfect, but it represented a negotiated settlement between capital and labour. Our challenge now is similar: How do we create a social and economic framework that recognises the reality of a diverse, technology-driven workforce? Not through nostalgic manufacturing fantasies, but through genuine, forward-looking policy.
The American economic reset isn't about returning to some golden age. It's about building something new - messy, complicated, but potentially transformative. They’ve got the smash it with a sledgehammer part down to a tee, it would be good to see what they’re planning for after it's all in bits.
Just don't expect it to look anything like the brochure. Or the PowerPoint. Or the AI-generated vision board.
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