Trump is my fault.
Almost 40 years ago, I began teaching economics at Pitzer College. Coming from the World Bank, I was invited to give a talk on international trade at Claremont McKenna College early in my time at the 5Cs. I spoke enthusiastically about free trade — how it drives economic growth and raises living standards.
Only briefly did I mention the complications; some sectors and workers would lose out. But I reassured my audience that with smart policies — job training, regional support, education investment — we could support those left behind, and everyone would be better off.
Unfortunately, decade after decade, we failed to support those marginalized by our economic policies. Our college graduates did very well, but our high school graduates went nowhere. The understandable frustration by median Americans paved the way for the election of President Trump.
Since 1970 average income in the United States has almost tripled. Real GDP per capita rose from $25,710 in 1970 to $69,302 in 2025 (adjusted for inflation). In part, this growth was due to increasing free trade and globalization. World trade as a percent of world GDP tripled during this period. But most of this growth was due to increasing technological change. With automation, our factories became much more productive.
If you visited a Detroit auto plant in 1970, you saw hundreds of workers on the assembly line. Today you’ll find hundreds of robots, supervised by a few highly skilled technicians.
While average incomes rose, the benefits of international trade and technological change were unevenly distributed. Lower-skilled workers — especially those in manufacturing — lost their jobs either to automation or cheaper overseas labor. The standard of living increased steadily for college graduates. But those with less education saw their real wages stagnate or decline. Americans without a high school diploma had a higher standard of living in 1970 than they did 50 years later. Income inequality increased decade by decade. Our Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, rose from 34.7 in 1980 to 41.8 in 2023. We now have more income inequality than in 85 percent of the countries in the OECD.
As income inequality grew, so did life inequality. There’s now an 11-year life expectancy gap between college graduates and high school dropouts. “Deaths of despair” — from suicide, drugs, alcohol — are symptoms of this deep crisis. Remember that most Americans, 25 and older, do not have college degrees.
This didn’t have to happen. But people like me failed to speak up clearly, loudly and early enough. I used to separate positive economics — the study of what is — from normative economics — the study of what should be. I avoided discussing my values in the classroom. That was a mistake.
Economists, policymakers and educators have a responsibility to ensure that progress is broadly shared. International trade and technological advancement are powerful forces for good — but only if we put policies in place to prevent whole communities from being left behind.
We didn’t.
For decade after decade, administration after administration, Republican and Democratic, we failed to ensure that the benefits of growth were distributed to everyone. Communities devastated by half a century of lost factories and broken promises understandably lost faith in traditional Republican and Democratic leaders. Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, with his empty bluster, xenophobic scapegoating and sham solutions like trade wars and mass deportations.
Our prosperity depends, first and foremost, on our productivity here at home, not on what other countries or people do. But populist demagogues always point the finger at someone else: China, Mexico, immigrants. By blaming foreigners and immigrants, our policies are now causing enormous harm without dealing with any of the actual underlying problems.
I can’t pretend that a single lecture, or even a career of them, could have changed the course of American politics. But I regret not doing more — not warning my students more forcefully about the need for us to bring everyone along and not sharing my values when they mattered most.
We can’t undo the past. But we must do better now.
Let’s stop pretending that rising GDP alone means progress. Let’s remember that good policy must be both smart and fair. We should open the door for global and technological change, but we can’t leave half the country standing outside.
Linus Yamane is an economics professor at Pitzer College and a former economist at the World Bank and the Development Bank of Japan. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
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