Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness

Vice President JD Vance outlined the Trump administration's plan for the nation's "great industrial comeback" Tuesday at the American Dynamism Summit hosted by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. In his speech, Vance identified precisely what must change in order to unbridle U.S. innovation without further dispossessing and deracinating American workers.

Vance, who spent years as a venture capitalist after distinguishing himself overseas in the Marines, acknowledged at the outset that the Trump administration's endeavor to lead the world in artificial intelligence and other potentially disruptive technologies has prompted concerns about the potential for tension between the "techno optimists and the populist right of President Trump's coalition."

"While this is a well-intentioned concern, I think it's based on a faulty premise," said Vance, identifying as a proponent of both tribes. "The reality is that in any dynamic society, technology is going to advance, of course. And speaking as a Catholic, I think back to Pope John Paul II's opening lines of the encyclical Laborem Exercens: 'Through work, man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives.'"

The vice president underscored that, to the late pope's point, technology should not be inimical to labor; instead, it "should be something that enhances rather than supplants the value of labor" — something that improves productivity, increases wages, and "dignifies our workers."

The problem, suggested Vance, is that American firms grew addicted to the drug of cheap labor over the past four decades.

'Even if you replaced the financial element of their jobs — you would destroy something that was dignified and purposeful about work itself.'

This addiction, coupled with innovation's geographical divorce from manufacturing — a consequence of globalization and liberal economic thinking — has prompted some Trump-supporting populists to doubt the promised good of innovation. After all, populists witnessed the de-industrialization of America, an exodus of jobs, the gutting of the middle class, and an unprecedented stratification of wealth.

While foreign nations that Western elites figured for indefinite sources of cheap labor climbed the "value chain" and effectively ate America's lunch, populists watched as American workers at home were further alienated "from their jobs, from their communities, from their sense of solidarity," and from a sense of purpose, said Vance.

Vance intimated that compounding populists' skepticism is the cavalier attitude taken by some technologists and the leadership class' apparent belief that "welfare can replace a job and an application on a phone can replace a sense of purpose."

The vice president recalled a meeting in his venture capitalist days where he told a number of American tech leaders that "even if you had enough economic dynamism to provide the wealth to ensure [middle class families] could afford to buy a house and afford their food and so forth — that even if you replaced the financial element of their jobs — you would destroy something that was dignified and purposeful about work itself."

'We don't want people seeking cheap labor. We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America.'

Vance said that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar tech company suggested in response that Americans' loss of purpose would be remedied by "fully immersive gaming."

While concerns about the potential incompatibility between techno-optimism and rightist populism may be historically justified, Vance indicated that the current administration's "America First" policies can protect citizen labor and thereby reconcile the two camps.

"I'd ask my friends, both on the tech-optimist side and on the populist side not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation," said Vance. "Indeed, I'd say that globalization's hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it's been bad for innovation. Both our working people — our populists — and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy, and the solution, I believe, is American innovation, because in the long run, it's technology that increases the value of labor."

Vance further indicated that the Trump administration is going to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, in part by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor.

"You're making interesting new things here in America? Great. Then we're going to cut your taxes. We're going to slash regulations. We're going to reduce the cost of energy so that you can build, build, build," said the vice president. "Our goal is to incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers, and our own innovation. We don't want people seeking cheap labor. We want them investing and building right here in the United States of America."

The vice president distilled the fundamental premise of President Donald Trump's economic policy down to undoing "40 years of failed economic policy in this country," which he characterized as an addiction to cheap labor, both overseas and illegally imported into the country; the over-regulation of industry; the over-taxation of innovators; and the setting of caltrops before individuals seeking to build in the United States.

Vance indicated that by undoing these ruinous trends and wedding techno-futurism to rightist populism, America is destined for an industrial renaissance.

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