United States: If the decline in manufacturing employment is a result of technological progress and not of globalisation, protectionism is not the right remedy

We can assume that one of the components of "Trumpism" is a refusal to reduce the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States. But when we analyse the origin of the decline in manufacturing employment since 1990, we can see that 30% can be attributed to globalisation (opening of trade with emerging countries) and 70% to technological progress, i.e. to a purely domestic cause in the United States. Protectionism is therefore definitely not the right weapon to create new manufacturing jobs in the United States. The right weapon is to develop demand for industrial products by using a more favourable income distribution for wage-earners and an improvement in the sophistication of industry. The US external deficit is not due only to globalisation, but to the United States’ inability to produce a number of goods that are imported.