President-elect Trump and billionaire investor and businessman Mark Cuban agree on very little. Yet both believe losing jobs to machines is inevitable.
“We have to face the fact that countries are going to lose jobs to robotics,” Cuban wrote in a December blog post.
During a post-election interview with the New York Times in November, Trump said something similar when asked if he was worried whether workers will be replaced by robots in the factories he has committed to keeping or returning to the U.S.
“They will, and we’ll make the robots too,” Trump said to laughs, according to the transcript.
But these robots could offer a new opportunity to the U.S., Trump added.
Calling it “a big thing,” Trump went on to say that “[r]ight now we don’t make the robots. We don’t make anything. But we’re going to, I mean, look, robotics is becoming very big and we’re going to do that,” he said.
What Trump seemed to be getting at, and what proponents of robotics investment point out, is that undesirable low-skill jobs, such as those found on factory floors, are at risk, not the jobs of the future.
Right before the election, a group of 150 academics and industry leaders released “A Roadmap for U.S. Robotics,” a report intended to inform Congress of the myriad opportunities and advantages that being a leader in robotics offers. Within the 100-page document, the authors note a correlation between the strength of the robot industry and job growth.
“Over the last 5-6 years we have seen introduction of 600,000 new jobs in manufacturing. During the same period, we have seen significant growth in adoption of robot systems in industry,” they wrote. “Indeed, effective use of robotics will increase U.S. jobs, improve the quality of these jobs, and enhance our global competitiveness.”
The report is a follow-up to the original 2009 “roadmap” that convinced President Obama to create the National Robots Initiative in 2011, which pledged up to $70 million in research funding for “next-generation robotics.” With an eye toward the advancement of robot capability in fields such as healthcare, space travel and manufacturing, the Obama administration lauded robots for “increasingly lifting the burdens of tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous.”
It is unclear how Trump plans to make good on his statement that the U.S. will build more robots, but it’s likely to be an uphill battle.
The industrial robot industry has seen better days, according to Frank Tobe, owner and publisher of the Robot Report. He noted that “2/3 of the robotics industry and 100% of industrial robots are manufactured outside of the U.S. by non-U.S. companies.”
One possible solution is being offered by Cuban, who spent much of the presidential election criticizing Trump. In his December blog post, Cuban suggested taking a $100 million slice of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, intended for “inner cities,” roads and airports, and using that money to invest in robotics.
“Unfortunately, none of the companies that actually make the robotics are based here in the USA. That’s a problem that needs to be solved,” Cuban wrote. “We need to help develop domestic companies much like we did the electric car and wind and solar industries. Even if it means trying to help pick winners.”
That would be a tricky route for Trump, who already alarmed some conservatives late last year for securing $7 million in tax breaks in his dealings with appliance manufacturer Carrier to keep about a 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico. Critics viewed such a move as being “corporate welfare” in the same vein as Obama offering subsidies to electric car and renewable energy companies.
But Cuban argued that the investment is an essential one to steer clear of a rough future for the U.S., which he warned could become dependent on other countries for robotics.
“Our ‘infrastructure’ spending should look forwards, not backwards so that we can be the robotics hub of the world,” Cuban said.
