The Wealth Gap Won’t Close Itself — Trump’s Tariffs Are a Start

For decades, America’s working class has been fed the same economic prescription: ship factories overseas, flood the country with cheap imports, and tell displaced workers to “learn to code” or settle for low-wage service jobs. The result? Skyrocketing wealth inequality, gutted industrial towns, and a middle class that’s been hollowed out like a rusted steel mill.

Axios published an article today that drives home a stark reality: while the stock market soars and the wealthy watch their fortunes swell, the gap between rich and poor in America keeps widening. The gains of economic growth are increasingly concentrated at the top, leaving the working class with stagnant wages and dwindling opportunities. That imbalance isn’t accidental—it’s the result of decades of policy choices that favored Wall Street over Main Street. And if we want a different outcome, we have to change the playbook.

Reshoring manufacturing—one of the core aims of strategic tariffs—won’t solve every problem. Many of the new plants will be heavily automated, requiring fewer hands on the assembly line. But even with fewer jobs, the positions that do return tend to pay better, stabilize local economies, and provide ladders of opportunity for those without Ivy League résumés. More importantly, domestic production keeps the economic value here, rather than bleeding it out to low-wage nations and foreign investors.

If we combine reshoring with serious investment in worker training, support for collective bargaining (private unions - not unions captured by one political party), and industrial policy that rewards wage growth—not just shareholder gains—we can begin to chip away at the wealth gap. It’s not utopia. But at the very least, we can stop doing what has already proven to be a disaster for the working class.

Because the alternative is exactly what we’ve lived for 40 years—and that’s a blueprint for decline, not prosperity.