‘Screwed’: Mike Rowe warns of one potential problem Trump could face if his tariff plan works
By Nicole Silverio, Daily Caller News Foundation
‘There’s no workforce sitting there going, this is what I want to do. They’re not prepared
“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe said on Tuesday that if President Donald Trump’s tariffs cause manufacturing jobs to return to America, those positions will be hard to fill.
Rowe told podcaster Theo Von on his show, “This Past Weekend,” that there are numerous unfilled jobs in the manufacturing industry, which could cause issues if companies relocate more of these positions to the U.S. He expressed concern that these jobs might not be filled if Trump’s tariff plan succeeds.
“If, in general, [Trump] gets manufacturing reinvigorated in this country, then there’s gonna be a challenge that a lot of people aren’t talking about, which is labor,” Rowe said. “So, in January there were 482,000 open positions in manufacturing in this country, 480,000 open positions. If he gets his way and this all gets reinvigorated. You’re talking about 2 or 3 million new jobs, but there’s no workforce sitting there going, ‘this is what I want to do.’ They’re not prepared. There’s a skilled gap for sure, but there’s also a will gap.”
“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 500,000 manufacturing jobs open because the people who run those factories can’t find people who want to do the work. So it’s not enough to create the jobs,” Rowe continued.