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Trump Can Fix Major Manufacturing Issue No One’s Talking About

Donald Trump, Photo by The White House / Flickr

By Mary Rooke, Daily Caller News Foundation | May 12, 2025

President Donald Trump has tasked his new administration with bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. He sees this as a cornerstone of revitalizing the American middle class and strengthening our supply chain.

Still, there is one issue with America becoming a booming manufacturing hub that Trump is ideally suited to fix, and few people are discussing it.

Mike Rowe, former “Dirty Jobs” host, was a guest on Theo Von’s podcast on April 22 to talk in part about his charity the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which gives thousands of dollars in scholarship opportunities to people who want to go into trades jobs, like automotive, electrical, plumbing, etc. Rowe told Von that he supports Trump’s efforts to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. He sees this as a positive movement in America. However, he brought up a great point that many don’t seem to focus on: the U.S. has very few people interested in this type of work.

“The answer to your question regarding Trump actually starts with Obama. Because the year we started this (his charity) in 2008, … he (Former President Barack Obama) had a thing called the Highway Infrastructure Act,” Rowe said. “It was big news, headlines everywhere. He was going to create 3 million shovel-ready jobs. And I was rooting for him.”

“‘Dirty Jobs’ at the time was at its absolute peak. And what was weird, as the country was going into a recession, was that everybody I was talking to on ‘Dirty Jobs’, there were 12 million unemployed people, but they all had ‘help wanted’ signs out. They were really struggling to hire, and their basic b*tch was, ‘We just can’t find people who are excited to pick up a shovel. We can’t find people who want to do the work that we have,” he said.

“So I reached out in an open letter to the president in 2009,” Rowe continued. “I said, ‘Look, man, I am rooting for you. I think 3 million shovel-ready jobs sounds great, but part of making that succeed has to include a campaign to help make shovel-ready jobs cool because right now people aren’t buying it.” 

“I’m saying this because it’s about to happen again. Donald Trump is going down a road, and if he succeeds, he’s going to create millions of manufacturing jobs in a country that currently has nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs open because the people who run those factories can’t find people who want to do the work. It’s not enough to create the jobs,” Rowe said.

Rowe’s suggestion to fix this was for Obama to create a massive PR campaign to entice young workers into these fields. Obama obviously didn’t go down this route, but Trump should. Where Obama failed, Trump could succeed in creating a national economy centered on American workers, not the elites, and building the middle class through good-paying jobs that give people pride in their careers.

It’s not like the federal government and manufacturing industries don’t have a history of using massively successful public relations campaigns to increase the labor workforce.

During World War II, in 1942, the federal government created a propaganda system, the Office of War Information (OWI), to persuade Americans to support the war effort, which included “Benny the Bungler,” who encouraged safety habits to keep production flowing.

“Rosie the Riveter,” probably the most iconic propaganda poster produced during the war, was only created to raise morale at Westinghouse Electric, which made helmet liners. However, it became a symbol of female Americans entering the manufacturing industry. She was “Making history, working for victory.”

After the war in the 1940s, U.S. Steel created a photographic exhibit about steel production in America called Steel Making in America. Millions saw the exhibit because it was displayed in public libraries and school campuses across the U.S. Their target audience was local students from junior high, high school, and college. It was highly successful.

To be clear, what Trump is doing to bring back manufacturing in the U.S. is incredibly important for our country. Americans need good-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree and $100,000 in student debt. Still, if he is successful, we have to be able to answer the question about who will work in these factories.

For decades, young Americans have been told that going into trade work is beneath them. If they want to be successful in life, they need to go to university, get a diploma, and work in the corporate world. But that is simply not true.

For example, a plumber, with no experience, starts out making, on average, over $50,000 a year. However, their potential to earn isn’t capped at $50,000; a good plumber can make over $100,000 yearly, especially if they own the business.

Imagine where a high school graduate would be if they left high school and immediately entered a trade job making $50,000 a year. By the time their college friends graduated with their student loan debt, these tradesmen could be clearing $80-90,000 a year.

To revitalize the American Dream for young Americans, we must first break the “college or bust” cycle. We need a PR campaign showing positive results from entering trade work. And who would be better than Trump to spearhead this movement? He understands publicity better than anyone else in elected office.

Trump could create a “HUGE” patriotic campaign that would inspire the next generation to fill the gaps in manufacturing employment. But this needs to start immediately. We need high school sophomores and juniors to consider these jobs a possibility. In the long term, bringing back educational work courses like shop, woodworking, and home economics should become mandatory.

Bringing back manufacturing only solves half the problem. We have to change American minds about the trades, but that will only happen through education and promotion.

Mary Rooke is a commentary and analysis writer at the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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