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The trade war that could wallop San Diego

Good story. I've read about the forecasts of robotic and AI taking more human jobs. It's happening around us all the time. The only reason America has an auto industry is due to robots where making cars takes far less human labor than in the good old days. Manufacturing may be coming back to the U.S. but the job creation will be in operating and servicing automated assembly. Trump would need to create a major job retraining program if his base of coal miners and old-school factory workers are to join the workforce again. There is another thing to think about. America doesn't have a lock on automation. China and other manufacturing economies are also deploying millions of robots in their factories to continue to drive prices down. Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn, the maker of Apple iPhones) has plans for millions of robots to replace a good part of its workforce. In May 2016 Foxconn announced it had reduced its workforce from 110,000 to 60,000 using "Foxbots," their own robots. China is investing heavily in a robot workforce. It may be hard to imagine, but once the robots are widespread in China, their people will experience rising unemployment. Where are low skilled workers going to find jobs when robots are taking more of them? The Trump administration is wasting precious time on fool's errands rather than laying out a plan to invest in modernization of our manufacturing infrastructure. Those $25 and $40 an hour manual labor jobs are not coming back. Even the $15 minimum wage jobs are targets for automation. Wealth will continue to concentrate to companies and individuals who own the machines.
— March 16, 2017 11:15 a.m.

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