Part 7/11:
The evolution of agriculture: In the early 1900s, most Americans worked on farms manually. Over time, innovations like tractors, GPS-guided machinery, and automation replaced manual labor, allowing higher yields with fewer workers. Today, agricultural output is higher than ever, even though the number of farmers has decreased. Similar shifts are happening in manufacturing due to automation and capital-intensive production.
This means that increased productivity and automation have made many manufacturing jobs redundant, even as output rises. Therefore, trying to "bring back" manufacturing via tariffs ignores the structural economic changes that have made many jobs obsolete—not the foreign countries themselves.