WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump signed on Wednesday an order to improve job training for skilled trades, an initiative twinned with tariffs in his gambit to revive U.S. manufacturing.
The Labor, Education and Commerce departments will focus on job needs in emerging industries including those enabled by artificial intelligence, with a goal to support more than 1 million apprenticeships per year, according to a White House summary of the order, which was first reported by Reuters.
The Republican president, who took office in January, shocked markets with a blitz of tariffs on imports, some of which are now paused pending negotiations with U.S. trading partners.
Trump has promoted levies on imports as a solution for a wide range of ills including a decades-long decline in U.S. factory jobs. Some of his economic advisers blame this trend on industries relocating factories abroad where workers earn lower wages, thus shrinking high-paying career opportunities for Americans without college degrees.
Tariffs could steer more U.S. customers to American-made goods. But any hoped-for U.S. factory renaissance faces several obstacles, including a shortage of skilled workers.
The U.S. has been training far fewer factory workers for decades now, while retirements and immigration crackdowns are draining the pool of labor available to manufacturers.
The new executive order is aimed at tilting U.S. government agencies away from overwhelming support for the professional jobs that colleges and universities prepare workers for, and toward backing skilled trades, like electricians, machinists and nursing assistants.
Such jobs often require significant training, credentials and apprenticeships, but often do not require a four-year college degree.
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“After years of shuffling Americans through an economically unproductive postsecondary (college) system, President Trump will refocus young Americans on career preparation,” the summary said.
“This is like a training center, right, for what we’re trying to do, which is jobs at great salaries,” Trump said before reporters as he signed the order in the Oval Office.
It was not clear how much funding would be allocated to the plan, but the goal was to redirect “funds away from ineffective programs,” according to a person familiar with the plans. The text of the order was not immediately available.
Trump won 56% of voters without a college degree nationwide during the 2024 presidential election, exit polls then showed, 13 points ahead of Democrat Kamala Harris and 6 points higher than his showing in 2020.
The U.S. president has courted support among labor unions and working-class voters, long a cornerstone of Democratic support.
He has frequently blasted the country’s elite universities, threatening to strip their research funding and tax deductions, and accusing several of being gripped by antisemitic, anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies. Universities including Harvard have blasted the steps as political interference.
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