As we face a global crisis in logistics, supply chains and manufacturing capacity have become impossible to ignore. Suddenly these topics are all over US political discourse, prompting even mainstream news outlets to begin to question the legacy of globalization and deindustrialization.

But while current crises have turned up the volume, the discussion about the decline of US manufacturing employment was already underway. A defining feature of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was a critique, however incoherent, of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and deindustrialization. That focus was arguably a major reason for his success.

Since Trump’s election, our major media institutions have mostly explored the loss of unionized, blue-collar manufacturing jobs as part of a broader attempt to understand the social and political angst of the so-called “white working class.” In this worldview, the future of blue-collar work is only of concern to white men. MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid expressed this idea when she described President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation as a “white guy employment act.”