Finally, a Compassionate Trade and Industrial Policy Emerges

Recent speeches by and interviews with Trump officials are revealing for something Americans have not heard for decades - care and concern for the working class.

For too long, America's working class has been crushed under the weight of a ruthless trade and industrial regime orchestrated by a power elite—Wall Street Journal editorialists, think-tank technocrats, and globalist cheerleaders—who sold out the nation's heartland for the enrichment of a tiny financial caste. The result was a grotesque transfer of wealth, dignity, and hope overseas, leaving behind hollowed-out towns, stagnant wages, and a middle class reduced to scavenging dollar-store trinkets. The ultra-elite toasted their cosmopolitan gains with bigger yachts and the lowest social and cultural obligations of any generation of Americans.

The social contract became, "We get richer and more cosmopolitan, and you peasants go on welfare and thank us for cheaper wide-screen TVs and more dollar-store plastic junk made in China." We've previously written about this toxic trade, but there is now reason for optimism that the abuse of American workers is going to end.

The sanguinity derives from Vice President J.D. Vance's remarkable speech at the American Dynamism Summit, which was followed by Tucker Carlson interviewing Bob Lighthizer (see videos for both below), a former US Trade Representative who retains influence in the current administration.

They pointed to a new vision for America's trade and industrial policy that places the well-being of the American people—particularly the working class—at its core. Rarely have Americans seen any compassion in our trade and industrial policies. We finally have high-level officials and influencers advocating to reverse decades of harm and decline driven by unchecked globalization.

By Americans, For Americans, For America

Lighthizer delivered an incisive critique of a trade regime that maliciously hollowed out communities by sending their jobs, incomes, and dignity overseas for "quarterly prints" that could goose stock prices and option awards higher for a tiny fraction of the population. Vance presented a similar outline of "protective populism" paired with "America-first innovation," harnessing AI and manufacturing resurgence to secure meaningful, middle-class livelihoods.

None of this can happen without an emergency revival of mineral exploration, mining, refining, and metal processing in the US, backed by a massive expansion of power generation from our abundant thermal coal reserves and uranium resources.

“The president is trying to use tariffs to move towards [trade] balance to get a better distribution of wealth within our country so that working people end up with a higher percentage of the wealth, and we have this economic boom that's going to come by from reducing that huge perennial trade deficit.” Bob Lighthizer

Together, their approaches share a deep Christian-motivated empathy for American workers ruthlessly betrayed by global elites. They want to pursue national renewal through rehabilitated trade and industrial policies that we will coin as "compassionate pragmatism." It should be loudly cheered by Christians, who can put a shoulder to the wheel and bring these policies home to their towns and neighborhoods.

Lighthizer reminds us that two-thirds of American workers only have a high school education. Yet, they have been abandoned, as seen in jobs vanishing, imported substitute labor, and wages stagnant for 25 years (there was a fleeting uptick under Trump), and a shocking eight-year drop in life expectancy compared to prior decades, driven by "deaths of despair" from alcohol, drugs, and suicide. He speaks with the intergenerational empathy of a pastor for his people, and it's terrific to listen to because, to date, we have been under the thumb of callous Josiah Bounderby technocrats loyal only to their veneered luxe lifestyles.

Similarly, Vance's remarks at the American Dynamism Summit demonstrate heartfelt concern for middle-class families." He emphasizes not just financial security but the dignity and purpose of work, which could be further eroded with unchecked technological innovation and outsourcing.

“Cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it's a crutch that inhibits innovation. I might even say that it's a drug that too many American firms got addicted to. Now, if you can make a product more cheaply, it's far too easy to do that rather than to innovate.” J.D. Vance

Lighthizer contrasts the transfer of wealth overseas—a negative $23.5 trillion international investment position and trade deficits of $800 billion to $1 trillion annually—to the erosion of the middle class's quality of life. The system, he argues, has stripped away not just economic security but the egalitarian spirit that once defined America, where "80% of us thought we're middle class," where kids of all backgrounds shared Little League fields and diner booths, believing in equal shots at success. Now, with the top 1% holding more wealth than the middle 60%, he sees a "recipe for social instability and revolution."

Vance slams cheap labor as "a crutch that inhibits innovation." The Vice President also favors tariffs but emphasizes American ingenuity to "build an America that lasts for centuries." He insists that "technology and populism can coexist" when innovation serves "stable, middle-class jobs" rather than replacing them.

Lighthizer laments the loss of the American Dream's core tenet: "children can no longer expect to live longer than and be richer than their parents." It's a call to return to prioritizing human flourishing over short-term and ephemeral upticks and downticks in the stock market and GDP figures that can barely be trusted.

His policy prescription is tariffs, balanced trade, and strategic decoupling from adversaries like China, which he regards as necessary for protecting and restoring the people most affected by the previous policies.

Lighthizer contrasts America's tariff-driven prosperity from the 1800s to the early 20th century—when it became the world's wealthiest nation—with the post-WWII free trade era that, after initial successes, enabled competitors like China to gut American manufacturing, erasing five million jobs since the 1990s "trifecta of stupid" (NAFTA, WTO, and China's most-favored-nation status).

Conclusion

If Vance and Lighthizer manage to help deviate American trade and industrial policy, it will be as much a moral reckoning as a generational shift. The abuse of American workers may finally be nearing its end through a compassionate pragmatism that demands we first look after our nearest neighbors before we indulge in charity for faraway places.

---