How do I explain this to people?
First the manufacturing jobs really went to Mexico, then countries south of Mexico, then China when they figured out how to move goods from there to Mexico and then into the US by treaty. NAFTA was the killer though. Not only automobile and car parts, but the entire Textile Manufacturing operations across the country gone in a little more than a decade.
When Ross Perot in the 1992 Presidential debate with Bush and Clinton and later with Al Gore about NAFTA, he warned everyone what would happen. He predicted a "giant sucking sound" would be heard from the jobs being vacuumed from the US to Mexico. That was back when I was naive and NAFTA was a bi-partisan trade deal that sold out the country just like Ross Perot said. And here we are 25+ years later. Hopefully USMCA will fix some defects.
“You been hittin the Opium pipe again?? We didn’t “automate” any jobs away,, we sold out America and Employed Slaves in China.”
It’s just part of his narrative to justify his idiotic $1000 a month giveaway because robots are going to take those jobs away.