Of course tariffs are about masculinity
In part, at least.
I’ve waded around in masculinity politics for oh I don’t know a decade now. And I’ve always been sensitive about the intersection of economic pain and masculinity – specifically, the way politicians lean into Bringing Manufacturing Back™ to America.
After all, manufacturing has declined. Some towns/cities/regions/states were devastated by that decline. A lot of people lost jobs, and local economies were devastated. And so on, and so on.
Now. It FELT to me like the constant boosting of manufacturing was, yes, about economic pain, but also some nostalgia-encrusted urge to prioritize men. Saying that out loud without a million qualifications though? Ehhhhh gotta be careful.
And then along comes…this.
Now while Watters’ comments (among them, that sitting behind a computer screen makes you a woman) got all sorts of internet people angry, he didn’t come up with this take in isolation. He was responding to Free Press writer Batya Ungar-Sargon, who on Fox News last weekend talked about how tariffs would fix a “crisis in masculinity.”
And while I saw a lot of people rolling their eyes at these takes (“Pfffffft those Fox News hosts making everything about penises” was the general reaction that I saw), my reaction was: “Well…yeah.”
I don’t mean there’s a crisis in masculinity that needs fixing. I just mean that it’s impossible to divorce the talk of a “comeback in manufacturing” from a conversation about the primacy of masculinity over femininity in our society.
This doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for the people hurt by the decline of manufacturing. (Even if, because technology, there’s no foreseeable way to bring back jobs to anywhere NEAR where they used to be.)
But also I would argue that none of this is new. Yes, Trump and his most ardent followers are way, way louder in worshiping “traditional” masculinity than any other modern president.
But whenever a president wants to show us that he cares about the American Worker, he puts on a hardhat. Trump just does it more prominently, and his followers are a lot louder about how great manly jobs are.
Trump loves cosplaying as a guy with a manly-guy job – wearing hardhats and getting behind the wheel of a truck.
But then, Biden did it.
Obama did it, too.
.png){kind=link}
Bill Clinton did.
Hell, fake-president Dave did it.1
I know – it’s just a bunch of hardhats. But the bigger point I’m making is that trade is not only an economic issue – it’s an IDENTITY issue. And it’s been that way for a very long time.
I wrote about this in 2018, as Trump was pushing his first run of tariffs. While manufacturing workers and industry groups are of course happy to back trade policy they think will onshore jobs, I also dug into the massive attention that manufacturing gets in our politics, as a result of a very particular rosy nostalgic picture of America that a lot of people have:
Trade taps into America's identity as a country that makes things. Political discourse surrounding trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership has a tendency to focus heavily on manufacturing, even though TPP also dealt in large ways with intellectual property, environmental regulations and labor standards.
And that means that messages surrounding these tariffs may resonate deeply with some voters.
"People — especially when you go to Trump voters — they have this view of manufacturing that's really emotionally packed," said Jeremy Rosner, executive vice president at Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.
"There's definitely a huge, nostalgic '50s, '60s, heyday-of-America, Rosie-the-Riveter-laden kind of thing around manufacturing. So people in those communities who hear Trump or whoever it is talking about protecting those jobs, there's a lot of emotional overtones."
Meanwhile, consider that the most dependable growth industry in the last few decades is healthcare. Not only that, but there will continue to be a constant need for care workers as 1) Boomers continue to age and 2) people keep having babies and needing to work outside the home.
Now ask yourself: how many politicians have you seen doing photo ops in nurse scrubs?
But again, Trump has for a long time placed heavy emphasis on manly jobs. I wrote about this in 2020.
Masculinity is also reflected in Trump's economic rhetoric. He was blatant about it this week when he told a crowd in Michigan, "We're getting your husbands back to work." (This is despite the fact that women have disproportionately dropped out of the labor force during the pandemic.)
But it also has arguably long been present in the president's insistent focus on male-dominated, blue-collar professions.
In multiple major economic addresses and State of the Union speeches, Trump has highlighted professions like manufacturing, mining and construction, but virtually ignored other working-class, "pink-collar" workers in female-dominated, care-oriented jobs like nursing or health aides. And in his job-creation initiatives, Trump has also tended to focus on those blue-collar areas — particularly manufacturing.
Indeed, he seems to relish the public appearances he gets to do while promoting these industries, as he dons hard hats or sits behind the wheel of a semi.
It's true that manufacturing can provide stable, high-paying jobs and that COVID-19 showed that U.S. supply chains need improvement. However, a relentless focus on manufacturing overstates that industry's importance in regaining American jobs, while obscuring the reality of America's growing working class of women — often, nonwhite women — in the service sector.
You can see this in areas other than trade policy. I wrote back in 2021 about how infrastructure is a gender issue – how people sure like the idea of government supporting physical infrastructure that people (men) build with their hands, but not the care infrastructure that people (women) provide to children and the elderly, despite the fact that both undergird the modern economy.
Upholding “manly” jobs as the ideal jobs just might not be smart economically, as Richard Reeves has been arguing for years now. His position is that more men need to enter what he calls HEAL jobs (Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy) – more-stable jobs than manufacturing now that many American jobs have been offshored and, frankly, are not coming back.
I want to add another dimension to this, though. I think another layer of masculinity in the current tariff conversation is the idea of pain. As the White House keeps arguing, Americans just need to grit their teeth and endure “short-term pain” until the ultimate benefits of tariffs materialize. This, of course, fits with Trump’s masculinity-heavy message. And while it doesn’t seem to have sunk in for a lot of people (consumer confidence is dropping), you can see how it would be an attractive argument: You don’t like the tariff policy? Maybe you just aren’t tough enough. Suck it up.
I cover tariffs a lot, so I’m very curious what kind of benefits might develop…and how long voters will be willing to wait for them.
—
LINKS AND HOUSEKEEPING
Paywalled articles. For reasons I’ll explain someday, I have paywalled old articles. I will unlock them eventually, but for now, keeping things closed.
Tariffs! Tariffs! My life has been all tariffs all the time baybee. First off, read about the “reciprocal” (but very much not reciprocal) tariffs Trump imposed. Listen to our excellent NPR Politics Podcast episode about it, too. But also, listen (or read) to my story about how tariffs will affect farmers (spoiler: badly!). I suggest listening, personally, because there are great farm voices in this, with accents that bring me right back home.
I didn’t like Severance, so there. The great people at Pop Culture Happy Hour keep having me on despite my being a sourpuss about various movies and TV shows. In continuing this trend, I found Severance season 2 to be a self-indulgent bore. And I’m right. Go listen for proof.
YOUR INTERNET JOY OF THE DAY: Watch this and weep with laughter. (BONUS: there’s a Michael Mann-fest on Criterion right now! Go subscribe and watch Heat2, sure…but especially go watch The Insider, the single greatest journalism movie ever.")
ACTUALLY LET’S DO ANOTHER. The guy with a good attitude towards menstruation. Why is this funny? Is it misogynistic? What on earth is happening? Whatever. Dave Foley is a treasure.
FUCK IT LET’S DO ONE MORE. We all need more joy. Here’s some joy.
“Danielle, how many newsletters can you shoehorn the 90s comedy classic Dave into?” A LOT, OKAY?
Just once, at the sale barn when an Angus bull enters the ring, I’d love to yell out “Great ass!”.