September 26, 2024 - 8:00pm
It appears to be a rule of modern politics that politicians must pander to voters. The latest example of this is Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s proposed $100-billion manufacturing plan, in an obvious drive to win over Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Her rival Donald Trump’s grand claims about import tariffs — especially high for Chinese goods — are aimed at winning the same voters.
Trump can at least claim that manufacturing grew during his tenure, although his pro-industry rhetoric tended to be more effective than his bite. In contrast, Vice President Harris’s new enthusiasm for industrial growth belies her own record and ideological orientation. The Biden administration has spent billions and placed great rhetorical emphasis on sparking manufacturing growth, but the results have been modest at best. Over the past year, the US has begun losing manufacturing jobs — something rarely acknowledged in the mainstream party press.
More telling, however, is Harris’s own record. As Attorney General of California, she enforced climate policies that were devastating to factories and virtually every sector of the “carbon economy”. Over the past decade, California has fallen into the bottom half of states in manufacturing sector employment growth, ranking 44th in 2022. Between 1990 and 2021, according to the Census of Employment Wages, California saw a reduction of 795,879 manufacturing jobs. What growth that has taken place more recently has been largely in Sun Belt states.
More worrisome still, even the tech industry is losing jobs in California. Data shows that the state has seen its share of the nation’s advanced-industry jobs stagnate while lower-tax states benefit from the exodus. Particularly devastating is the recent loss of SpaceX to Texas, meaning California — the home of Silicon Valley and Big Tech — will play a diminished role in the future of space exploration.
Despite Kamala Harris’s attempt to be the tribune of “people of colour” or a representative of the working class, her climate zealotry has disproportionately impacted ethnic-minority workers. Latino workers are overrepresented in these industries nationwide but in California they account for more than half of all transport sector workers, as well as manufacturing and construction workers. At the huge Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, regulations seeking to terminate gas-powered trucks endanger the jobs of the primarily Latino workers as the port faces strong competition from places such as Houston in Texas, Tampa in Florida and Norfolk in Virginia, which impose no such regulations.
Green policies implemented by the VP have pushed California’s energy prices well above the national average, spreading “energy poverty” to many communities, particularly in the less affluent interior. With the recent departure of oil giant Chevron, California — once a rival to Texas as an oil capital — now has no major energy firms located there. Essentially, the economy of places like inland Bakersfield have been sacrificed to fulfil the climate agenda of Harris’s base in the progressive coastal locales.
California did not see an industrial boom under Harris, but instead a worrying bust. Many hardware-oriented companies — Occidental Petroleum, Jacobs Engineering, Parsons, Bechtel, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and McKesson — have simply packed up and left for other states. In 2020, California had only one-seventh as many company-initiated capital projects as the leading state, Texas.
It is likely that Harris’s future economy — should she win in November — will follow the Biden route, favouring government employment as the key growth sector. “Kamalafornia” is simply ahead in this new game of gnomes. Since 2022, all the jobs created in the state were in government or supported by the public sector while private employment actually dropped. Now, with the state suffering deep budget shortfalls, even state employment is beginning to drop.
It seems hardly a stretch to insist that Harris, a product of the Bay Area political machine, will repeat as president what has happened in California. Since 2008 the state has created five times as many low-wage jobs as high-wage jobs, which is just one reason for the current drive to force higher wages for fast-food workers. Harris is trying to sell a future of “joy” in an “opportunity economy”. If she has convinced voters in Middle America that they want to be like California, the VP and her political team will have pulled off one hell of a feat.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.
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SubscribeThis is my last comment on this site.
If anyone hasn’t read this article yet, I highly recommend it:
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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-freedom-has-faded-on-bidens-watch-russia-middle-east-war-0f627381
What a dreadful comment to depart with. I won’t be looking at your link.
I continue to be gobsmacked that net zero receives so little attention. The impact of these policies will be economically devastating. You cannot run a modern industrial economy, and high-tech sector, without access to abundant, cheap, reliable energy.
The U.S. benefits from abundant resources so it has managed to keep energy prices relatively low, except in states like California and New York. But if Harris is elected, she will dive deep into deranged energy policies and eventually the U.S. ends up in the same spot as Europe and Britain today.
The author briefly mentions California’s plans to ban fossil-fuel trucks at its Long Beach port. This idea is truly batshit crazy and will more than quadruple transport costs for products leaving the port. You might as well shut it down.
All this garbage will eventually implode into itself. The only question is how much damage is caused along the way.
You’d think that people would see what’s happened in California, and just run a mile from Harris, Newsom and anyone associated with their policies. She can stay as tight-lipped as she likes about what her policies are but it’s all right there for the world to see what they are, right up to the outcomes.
Anyone still voting for that deserves what they get.
We have devolved into an Idiocracy, that’s why. Just ask any D today why they vote D.
Yes, but the rest of us who run a mile from them and their policies don’t deserve it!
It’s somewhat of a mystery to what extent Harris will pursue anti-industrial policies if she becomes president. On the one hand, she’s an elitist, with little sympathy for the working poor and a history of climate extremism in California; on the other hand, she reinvented herself as pro-industry and even pro-fracking when she ran for national office; on the other hand, as a Democrat she’ll do her best to fill the federal courts and administrative agencies (where most of the laws are really made) with left-leaning ideologues who will generally be hostile to business, even if the president who appointed them is somewhat moderate.
Here are my first impressions of Harris, which I wrote way back when she got the VP nomination in 2020 and which I think are still accurate: https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/what-to-expect-from-kamala-harris
And my argument as to why it doesn’t really matter much if people like Harris and Walz are centrists on issues like gas drilling and permitting reform or even supporting the police, since on the Dem side of things elected officials are for the most part ceremonial officials, and their main function is to turn over as much power as possible to the unelected arm of the government – i.e. judges and letter agencies – who are much freer to pursue far-left policies without interference: https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-it-doesnt-matter-if-tim-walz
Wouldn’t it be better to call yourself twilightpatriot instead of Unherdreader in your posts. It would make it easier to distinguish you from all the other ones who call themself Unherdreader.
Why should I believe Trump’s blue-collar rhetoric? He is a rich man who got rich, like his father, as a slum lord (no black tenants allowed until the feds stepped in). His entire career —and I’ve known about him since the Eighties—he has destroyed small businesses. Plumbers, electricians, tile workers, etc., were not paid when they worked on Trump Tower. They took him to court, but Trump kept the cases in court so long, they had to accept pennies on the dollar. Some of these businesses went under. Trump’s signature achievement while in office was a massive tax for corporations and the very wealthy. The cuts for the working class amounted to about $40 a month, if that. My husband and I, both teachers, saw our taxes go up. Can anyone give me an example of anything significant that Trump did for the working class? I don’t want to be cynical, but all parties cater to the “average man,” and they always have. I should also add that Trump used illegal immigrants, many of them Polish, to demolish the building where Trump Tower would be built. He refused to pay them. Lawyers stepped in and sued Trump. Even though the workers were illegal, they were awarded $25 million. Trump was also busted for using illegal immigrants at Mar-a-Lago and all of his golf clubs/resorts. These jobs could have gone to American workers.
Why should I believe Trump’s rhetoric about blue-collar workers? Trump began, with his father, as a slum lord (no black tenants allowed). His entire career—and I’ve known about him since the Eighties—Trump has cheated small businesses. When he built Trump Tower, he refused to pay many businesses—plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc.—and they had to take him to court. Trump tied up the cases so long the businesses so long, they had to settle for pennies on the dollar. Some businesses went under. Trump used illegal workers to demolish the building where Trump Tower would be built. He refused to pay them. Lawyers stepped in, and they were awarded $25 million. Trump’s signature achievement while in office was the massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. Blue-collar workers were lucky to see a cut of $30 a month. Many middle class workers, like my husband and I, saw our taxes go up. Can anyone give me one example of any significant gains for the working classes while trump was in office. Look, I’m plenty cynical, but all parties since the founding of America have tried to appeal to the average working man. And they always will.
This election, as is true with most, is about the lesser of two evils. If you think that’s KH, then vote for her. I’d rather have a strong border and keep my kids out of the MIC’s permawars. Not fooling myself about prices declining or taxes going down. That wont happen until the size Federal government is significantly reduced.
Harris is a part of a political tide that is going out but because the US MSM is determined to defeat Trump she will almost certainly win. Four years of Harris as President will make the turbulent four years of Trump seem like an oasis of calm and a golden age.
Why do you think they I’ll be less calm than Bidens four years?