Bring Levi's production back to America

Trump has made it a hallmark of his rise to power that America needs to start manufacturing again if it wants to become wealthy again (and not just for the 1%).

So far he's made examples out of companies that make machines -- cars, air conditioners, iPhones -- since the workers get paid better in those industries. They add more value assembling cars than they would assembling burgers because consumers are not willing to pay much for someone else to assemble a burger for them -- but a car? Who would know where to begin, even assuming you had all of the raw materials and equipment at hand?

By bringing back jobs that add a lot of value to their employers' operation, Trump is lifting up the working and middle class without having to raise the minimum wage. Most manufacturing jobs already pay at least $15 an hour, which the Bernie people want to be the new minimum wage. Aside from not having to force employers to pay more than it's worth to hire someone, the workers enjoy the dignity of having a decent-paying constructive job rather than a handout.

But even in our manufacturing heyday, making machines was not the entirety of what we made, especially for female workers. There were whole industries that mass-produced what women used to make in their own homes, such as clothing and linens of various kinds. Although they don't add as much value as workers making air conditioners, seamstresses still save consumers a big headache by assembling their clothes for them.

Clothing wears away faster than an air conditioner or a car, so what the clothing manufacturers miss in profit margin per item they make up in sales volume.

Whenever he feels like the timing is right, Trump should pick an iconic clothing company that has off-shored its production. The carrot is the much lower corporate tax rate and reduction of pointless regulations. The stick is a big fat 35% tariff if they insist on ruining American workers' livelihoods while selling them cheap crap from the third world.

I nominate Levi's as the next target. Founded way back in 1853, they used to have 63 factories in America as recently as the early 1980s, employing between 15 and 20 THOUSAND workers, and they closed their last factories less than 15 years ago. The final nail in the coffin is so recent that there are even contemporary articles about it on the internet (covered by Forbes, CBS, and NBC).

Everybody recognizes Levi's, everybody has a pair, so it wouldn't require a campaign just to familiarize the public with who the target is. Nor what the problem is -- everyone understand that "made in Mexico / India / etc." is crap in clothing, while "made in Italy / England / etc." means high quality. The difference is that Levi's isn't a luxury brand, so we wouldn't be paying extra for its connotations like we would for an Italian designer pair of jeans.

Trump is a genius at identifying brand ambassadors, and would not have to personally take on the project so much. Have someone more relatable to the target audience be the face of the arguments and policy changes. Former beauty pageant contestants with a conscience and business sense? Maybe Ivanka herself?

It's not an ancient tradition set in stone that jeans have to be made by slaves in the third world so that the corporate stockholders continue to make profits like they did in their heyday, forever. Sometimes they're going to make more, sometimes less -- and that doesn't give them the right to fire the entire American workforce.

What kind of sick society would promote those norms with blood relatives or spouses or churches? "Welp, you've been dragging me down from 100% maximum for a few quarters now... you understand that I've got to ditch you. Maybe when/if you're back at your peak levels, you can return. Otherwise you can get re-trained to fit into a relationship with some other brother / husband / congregation."

The new approach of government must be stewardship over America's industries as resources that the American people depend on for their livelihoods, not helping corporate boards make off with as much money as humanly possible, and the devil if it ruins everyone else's lives.

And remember this earlier post: when manufacturing returns, the higher labor costs will not automatically go toward higher prices for consumers. They can just as well get eaten by the stockholders in the form of lower profit margins per item. Companies that stubbornly insist on raising prices to maintain profit margins will get out-competed by their rivals who decide to be the first mover in biting the bullet. So they'll still be profitable and rich, just not richer than God -- perfectly fine.

On top of prices that are roughly the same as before, we're going to get a much better product, and we're going to improve the lives of tens of thousands of workers just in the Levi's company alone. Better yet, these will be workers who would have a hard time getting good-paying jobs in other manufacturing sectors like car production -- namely working-class women.

That will have all sorts of positive knock-on effects, such as women not depending so much on the government to provide for them, and not being as in thrall to the neoliberal Democrat coalition that tosses them a few handouts while shipping their good-paying jobs to Mexico, India, or China.

Those workers fired in the final San Antonio plant were mostly Hispanic, judging from the name of their protest group (Fuerza Unida), and they were angry that their jobs were getting shipped to Costa Rica. They didn't care that their job thieves were "fellow Hispanics," even assuming Mexican Texans identified with Costa Ricans. It's like Cesar Chavez's Hispanic farm union workers wanting to send the illegals back over the Rio Grande, so they couldn't undercut their wages in America.

Bringing back all these good-paying jobs for working-class women that don't require a high level of skill and training will bring even more minorities into the Trump coalition, without having to pander to identity politics or provide handouts. We don't need 100% of them to defect, just enough to break what's left of the blue wall in certain states. Then it's back to GOP dominance like we haven't seen since the original Progressive Era.