In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/845917ed-41a5-449f-946f-70263adba...
As others have pointed out, this is not a contradiction. (Read their reply.)
However, the question of 'Do YOU want to work in a factory?' is heavily influenced by the fact that we don't see factory work as a high-paying career, or a career at all. Part of the solution to the factory problem is enhancing the value proposition for the employees.
I am ambivalent toward tariffs, but the idea is that if we make foreign products more expensive then the higher price of domestic goods becomes more palatable by comparison. If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
It's also silly to reject long-term goals simply because achieving them is difficult.
We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.
This notion that we should move Americans from high-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs, and that such move will somehow enhance our prosperity is nutty. Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers, means less income in the system, means lower prosperity for all Americans. Moving tens of millions Americans to higher-productivity jobs while maintaining relatively low unemployment has to be seen as one of the economic success stories of the modern age.
Separately, Americans do not feel like this happened. That's a different discussion, about allocation of wealth. Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK. The difference is that the US has designed a system where every citizen lives a precarious existence, potentially a few months from destitution while other rich countries have not done that. We are allowed to make different choices in the US if we don't like this outcome.
But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive? That's the real test, and whether foolish or not that's what they are trying to do with tariffs.
> Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers
Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers? If that's true then fantastic. But I'd like to see evidence that what they are doing now is somehow more productive.
> Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.
Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
Not the OP, but poor as used here seems to refer to average quality of life , quality of infrastructure, etc.
> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
Higher wealth inequality leading to stretched public services and infrastructure, which lead to lower quality of life , despite higher nominal GDP per capita.
You are probably much better off being a poor person in Spain (33k GDP/capita) vs Mississippi (40k GDP per capita), because at least you don't need to worry about the cost of healthcare.
You're more likely (but still very unlikely) to get extremely rich in the US though, although probably not in Mississippi.
Healthcare, childcare, education, retirement are all big expensive things the US does incredibly poorly.