Bernie Sanders' vision of a blue collar revival is as unrealistic as Donald Trump's, economists say

(Image credit: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

published 4 April 2016

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are often cast as opposite poles of this presidential election, but when it comes to trade, immigration, and blue collar jobs, they actually have a lot in common. Both have promised to nix free trade deals and keep out low-wage, foreign workers to produce a blue collar revival in America.

"But many economists say that's little more than an appealing fantasy," Politico reports, because "[m]any, if not all, of the low-skilled, assembly-line jobs the two leading populist candidates talk about bringing back are gone for good."

So even if Trump or Sanders did succeed in forcing American companies to close factories abroad and open more at home, the new facilities would mostly "hire" robots. On the upside, however, as those low-skilled jobs have been automated, slightly higher-skilled — and better-paid — positions have become available instead. As a result, contrary to the Trump/Sanders doomsday rhetoric, American factory jobs have increased by nearly a million positions since 2010.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.