Those were the glory days for much of the American economy. And they were Donald Trump's glory days because that's before everyone discovered what a scoundrel he was and quit doing business with him. That's when he had to pivot to selling his "brand" and playing the character of a successful businessman on television.
What made it the glory days were circumstances like in-state college tuition being $500 a semester that meant you could pay for a college degree with a part-time job, and a large percentage of the population earning enough to buy a house. Economies are strongest when lots of people have disposable income to fill different conduits of commerce. As I said earlier and possibly in another thread, economies are lots and lots of toothbrushes, lawn mowers, and teachers, not a very few solid gold super yachts. Billionaires drive an economy only when they spread their billions around. An economy that feeds the insatiable greed of only a very few ends up collapsing after a short time. And often the only surviving industry is guillotines.
Trump wants to return to the glory days of the 1890s when a poorly-educated and poorly-paid population served largely untaxed and unregulated businesses and sustained an aristocracy of wealth and privilege. Sick or injured on the job? Too bad; labor is fungible and we'll just hire someone else to take your place. Having your face eaten by the leopards was just an ordinary Tuesday. Trump wants the glory days of the robber barons.
We can't return to the 1890s or the 1980s. The world is smaller. People are more connected. Moving goods is cheaper. Services are more important. America was the largest and most prosperous national economy a year ago, but somehow the Trumpistas have been convinced that the rest of the world has been systematically ripping us off for decades.
We tolerate a certain amount of instability because it is the natural consequence of innovation. The tractor disrupted the draft-animal infrastructure for farming and made it unstable until everyone normalized to it. And we often grease the wheels of innovation by taxing the horseshoes disproportionately. This is meant to shorten the period of instability, because the more people who buy into innovation, the faster it becomes the new stable status quo. Incentives for electric vehicles, for example, drive adoption. This is not what Trumps tariffs are meant to accomplish. As near as I can tell, none of the motivations put forward match the evidence. It's not going to return America to a manufacturing infrastructure. It's not going to fill the treasury to replace the tax cuts to the wealthy. It's not even leverage for bargaining, because other countries can see that Trump isn't serious about the tariffs and can see how easily Trump can be manipulated.
Trump is trying to make oxen great again by destroying all the tractors.
