The dream of greasy overalls is driven by nostalgia and doesn’t justify policies that harm US consumers

The exhortations to protect America’s industrial muscle have resonated in the US at least since maverick presidential candidate Ross Perot brought up the supposed “giant sucking sound” of jobs pulled to Mexico by the NAFTA trade agreement back in 1993.

They flourished under Donald Trump’s first presidency and his promise to restore jobs lost to trade agreements. Joe Biden, too, put “rebuilding the backbone of America: manufacturing, unions and the middle class” at the center of his agenda. And in 2024, Trump reheated his old promise that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country”.

There is an undeniable appeal to the hard hat and the grease-stained overalls; to the sweat on the brow of hard men in vintage posters; to the virtue of a hard day’s labor on the production line. But the American political class would do well to overcome its nostalgia for the past and forget about promises to make manufacturing great again.