Restoring full employment is a fantasy

You’d have thought US union bosses – Hillary Clinton backers to a man – would have been seething after meeting Donald Trump in the White House last week, says John Harris. Not a bit of it. “The respect that [Trump] just showed us,” said the head of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, “was nothing short of incredible.” And that’s because something truly radical, obscured in the fog created by his bigotry and lies, stands at the heart of Trump’s agenda: a bold project to restore full employment. He is setting out to “eat the American Left’s lunch”. Protectionism, threats to errant companies, appeals to patriotism, a level of “fiscal activism not seen since the 1930s” – Trump is ready to try anything to lure manufacturing firms back to the US. And he may succeed: indeed, many have returned already. But here’s the rub. They’re doing so precisely because the rapid advances in automation enable them to shed labour: “a robot is even cheaper than a Chinese worker, so ‘reshoring’ is a rational choice”. The notion that our political leaders have the power to restore old-fashioned, secure jobs is one that unites voters of the hard-right and the Left. Trump “may be about to test that idea to destruction”.