Opinion

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Commentary: Americans want to return to a place that no longer exists

Americans voted in the 2024 elections for a return to the past. But the past may not welcome the visit.

Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in the 2024 presidential election was a roaring endorsement of his “Make America Great Again” theme, which promises the restoration of grandeur from some storied point in the nation’s history. Trump never pinpoints the exact time when America was last great, but he doesn’t have to. Voters fill in the blanks by recalling the best times in their own personal pasts and imagining themselves there.

What Trump doesn’t do is account for everything that has changed since America’s glory days, whether they were in the 1950s or the 1980s or early 2000s. Service and information jobs, rather than blue-collar ones, now dominate the economy. The fossil fuels Trump so dearly loves have caused global warming that is beginning to raise the cost of insurance and home ownership across the nation. The world is becoming more dangerous in ways no American president can control. Consumers have gotten used to cheap goods, even if they come from problematic countries.

Trump’s promises to raise tariffs on imports, deport millions of immigrants, shun clean energy in favor of more oil and gas, and put billionaires in charge of government aren’t going to make America better. Trump, of course, will claim the opposite, despite any evidence to the contrary. But the old standards Trump wants to restore are gone forever.

Trump wants to rebuild US manufacturing, for instance, even though US manufacturing doesn’t need rebuilding. US industrial output is 63% greater than in 1990 and close to record highs. But manufacturing has declined as a portion of the overall economy as services have become a greater part. The manufacturing sector in 1947 accounted for 26% of GDP. Today it’s around 10%. Manufacturing employment has fallen as well, from a peak of 19.6 million workers in 1979 to about 12.9 million today.

This is the way economies evolve. Old industries slide down the value-added chain while new industries replace them at the top. The services sector has grown from 47.8% of GDP in 1947 to 72% today and includes some 137 million jobs in healthcare; hospitality; finance; real estate; transportation; professional services like insurance, law, and accounting; and many other types of businesses. Many jobs involve technology and the cutting-edge skills of developers, systems analysts, and people adept at deploying artificial intelligence. The growing part of the economy is where jobs tend to pay the most and workers with the right skills get furthest ahead.