We keep hearing that America needs more “good jobs,” but nobody wants to admit that means making stuff again, not just moving money around on screens. I’m fine with tax cuts, but if we hand giant corporations another break and they still build the plant in Vietnam, what exactly did we buy? I want policy that rewards factories here, apprenticeships here, steel poured here. And yeah, that might mean some things cost a little more at Target. I can live with that if it means my town has machine shops, not another dead strip mall and a warehouse full of imported junk. Free trade had its shot. It made Wall Street rich, hollowed out places that used to build engines, tools, furniture, all of it. A country that can’t make basics is weaker than it thinks.