The vast majority of Americans say it is more important for the United States to have a strong manufacturing base than to have an exorbitant amount of cheap, foreign products.
In a new poll by Rasmussen Reports, nearly 70 percent of likely voters said it is more important to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States than keeping prices on products low for consumers.
A minority of only 20 percent of likely voters said it was more important to keep product prices low than to have a booming U.S. manufacturing base.
Republican voters were more likely than Democrat voters to support keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S., as 80 percent of Republicans said it is more important to have a strong U.S. manufacturing base, while 66 percent of Democrats said the same.
Working and middle-class Americans were the most supportive of any economic group of a strong U.S. manufacturing base, with between 70 to 76 percent supporting keeping manufacturing jobs in the country rather than enjoying cheap products.
The least likely to support keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S. were wealthy Americans with a yearly income of at least $200,000. With the wealthy, only 52 percent said keeping U.S. manufacturing jobs was more important than low product prices, while 30 percent said cheap products were more important.
The poll shows widespread support for President Trump’s economic nationalist agenda — specifically among his base of working and middle-class Americans.
Most recently, against the wishes of the globalist, free-trade-wing of his White House and the Republican Party, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, both designed to increase manufacturing of steel and aluminum in the U.S.
American workers who suffered from decades of endless multinational free trade agreements thanked Trump in video messages, noting how unfair free trade had “left our factories to rot,” as Breitbart News reported.
Free trade, like immigration, is an issue that has come at the expense of American workers. With free trade, foreign markets have been readily opened to multinational corporations, allowing them to offshore American jobs while easily exporting their products back into the U.S.
The Rust Belt, which Trump swept in the 2016 presidential election, has been one of the hardest regions hit because of U.S. free trade with Mexico. In total, about 700,000 U.S. have been displaced, including:
- 14,500 American workers displaced in Wisconsin
- 43,600 American workers displaced in Michigan
- 2,600 American workers displaced in West Virginia
- 26,300 American workers displaced in Pennsylvania
- 34,900 American workers displaced in Ohio
- 34,300 American workers displaced in New York
- 6,500 American workers displaced in Iowa
- 24,400 American workers displaced in Indiana
- 34,700 American workers displaced in Illinois
Meanwhile, since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in the 1990s, at least one million net U.S. jobs have been lost because of the free trade deal. Between 2000 and 2014, there have been about five million manufacturing jobs lost across the country as trade deficits continue soaring.
One former steel town in West Virginia lost 94 percent of its steel jobs because of NAFTA, with nearly 10,000 workers in the town being displaced from the steel industry. Since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, there have been 3.2 million American jobs lost with 2.4 million of those jobs coming from the U.S. manufacturing sector.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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