At re-Americanized industries, a new level of job cornucopia

Trump is negotiating to bring back entire industries that used to have a place in the American economy -- such as electronics -- and that will have an additional benefit to job-seekers than simply the presence of more unfilled jobs. That is, since these industries have been sent out of the country for so long, their job openings will be in a "get in on the ground floor" industry, rather than a mature industry that is already well colonized.

Although the first round of applicants won't have the training to put together an iPhone, neither will any of the other American workers.

No clogged arteries in the promotion system, where the job you're looking to fill won't be open because the current occupant isn't being promoted up out of it.

Networking won't be as important, as there's nobody yet to network with in a new industry. Get trained, show up, don't screw up, and there you go.

And unlike other start-up industries that grow too fast and suffer from Gold Rush-style extinction after an initial boom, these industries have already proven their long-term worth and stability in both the United States way back when, and outside the country where the industries are currently located. They are not economic bubbles like "online social media". Making cars, television sets, and cell phones will not be going bust any time soon.

These industries already pay much better than the typical ones the workers would find themselves in -- that's why they were sent outside the country in the first place, to reap profits from labor arbitrage. Now we can add less difficulty getting your foot in the door, and less insecurity long-term.

There will be a boon to white-collar professionals as well, whose jobs are more industry-general rather than specific. If you're already trained as an accountant, you can switch industries from banking to electronics manufacturing without as much trouble as, say, switching from assembling burgers at McDonald's to assembling iPhones at Apple. Without needing as much specific training, the white-collars will be fast-tracked into the new industries.

That's another aspect that is often overlooked in the re-Americanizing of these industries -- they will produce not only blue-collar but white-collar jobs, too. The assembly line workers at a manufacturing plant don't run the whole operation by themselves. These middle and upper-middle class jobs were destroyed alongside the working class ones when the industry was sent out of the country.

Decades down the line, there will probably be class conflict that arises between the blue-collar workers and white-collar managers and professionals within these industries. But for now, they are both in the same boat of wanting the industries to return to this country so they can all get better-paying and more secure jobs.

This parallels the stages of populism after the elite-centric Gilded Age. First, during the Progressive Era, the focus was workers and industrialists teaming up to strengthen the nation's industries (as opposed to doing the bidding of foreign economies and peoples). Then, after that was achieved and immigration shut off, the foreign economic threat receded into the background, and the domestic class conflicts came more into focus, spawning the New Deal era with its tug-of-war between Big Labor and Big Business, as mediated by Big Government.

The neo-Progressive Era under Trump will be characterized by a seemingly strange coalition of workers, managers, and (loyal) company owners, uniting around the common project of re-industrializing the American economy. The Bernie movement was putting the cart before the horse, stressing class conflict at a time when nationalism is needed for populism to succeed. They'll get their turn, in a generation or so.