Trumpian sorts are unanimous: America wants factories. The president describes how employees have “watched in anguish as overseas leaders have stolen our jobs, overseas cheaters have ransacked our factories and overseas scavengers have torn aside our as soon as lovely American dream”. Peter Navarro, his commerce adviser, says that tariffs will “replenish the entire half-empty factories”. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, provides essentially the most cartoonish pitch of all: “The military of hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that sort of factor goes to return to America.”
