I think this guy is smart, but comparing globalization to tech advancement strikes me as very wrong. In the 90s and 2000s, the argument was that job losses from globalization were all about automation. You’d hear people say “it’s not trade, it’s the robots.” This story was so pervasive that I bought into it without really thinking about it. In fact, the link between automation and job loss was very weak. Most of the damage was done by offshoring, outsourcing, and excess migration. Put another way: enhancing workers’ productivity is good for them; giving their job to a low wage foreigner is not. There’s something similar at work today. All of the fear about AI causing mass unemployment serves to distract from the very real threat of continued job loss through dumb trade and immigration policies. President Trump’s approach corrects this broken dependence on globalization: strike better trade deals, promote American exports, fix our immigration system, and invest in making workers more productive. To be clear, there are a lot of risks with AI. Surveillance state, theft, fraud, privacy intrusions, political censorship, etc. But I remain very skeptical AI is going to destroy everyone’s job.(JD Vance)