Trump expanding the economy beyond the coastal elites

Joel Kotkin:

Almost all news coverage of the current election season has focused on cultural issues such as gender, race, and immigration. What the media have missed are deep socioeconomic trends driving parts of the country in divergent political directions. President Trump has overseen a significant transformation in the geography of the nation’s growth and prosperity. Instead of clustering along the coasts—as many progressives may have preferred—the nation’s economic expansion is now increasingly benefiting red states, notably in the southeast, Texas, and the intermountain West.

Indeed, according to the most recent Bureau of Economic Advisors report, income growth is strongest in pro-Trump states. In the first quarter of 2018, the income-growth leader by far was Texas, with 6 percent growth, followed by Louisiana, North Dakota, Montana, Arkansas, and Iowa. All are growing faster, often considerably faster, than liberal states like California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, and New York.

Strong wage growth in blue-collar sectors helps red states, while a weaker stock market threatens high-income coastal economies. Some of the same urban areas that benefited most under President Obama’s tepid recovery now show signs of languishing. By the end of last year, key metro areas including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston were falling behind competitors like Nashville, Orlando, Phoenix, Dallas, and Salt Lake City. The Bay Area economies, which ranked in the top five for income growth over the last decade, ranked 15th and 16th last year. Tech and business-service growth, though still strong in Silicon Valley, is now much more rapid in Sunbelt hotspots.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. has developed essentially two economies. On the one side is the widely celebrated “post-industrial” economy: software, entertainment, media, and financial and business services. These sectors flourished as the stock market soared in the ultra-low interest-rate environment fostered by the Obama administration, whose recovery strategy was built around bailing out major banks, all headquartered in deep-blue cities. The winners under Obama included urban real estate, financial-service firms, and the tech oligarchs. These elements now constitute the Democratic Party’s burgeoning financial base, allowing it consistently to spend more than the GOP in key congressional races, while the GOP still gains support in energy and other less heralded “legacy” industries.

There’s a glitter gap between the parties, too. The Democrats now own the fashion, media, literary, and entertainment communities, in the process turning the putative party of the common man into the political vehicle of the leisure class. In contrast, during the depth of the recession, a much larger, more dispersed America struggled. As traditional industries like manufacturing, energy, agriculture, home construction, and basic business services declined, the progressive clerisy in forums like Slate crowed that these blue-collar jobs were never coming back. Unlike the tech oligarchy or the financial giants, these older sectors wielded little political influence under Obama and, in the case of energy, seemed destined for a radical downsizing.

These heritage industries and the people who work in them elected Trump. Despite repeated tales of how tariffs are destroying manufacturers, the industrial sector, after weakening at the end of Obama’s term, has been enjoying its best growth since the mid-1990s. Critically, incomes are up for the lower deciles of the labor force, including young workers. Nothing guarantees that this recovery will continue, but Trump can justifiably boast about accomplishing what Obama failed to deliver in eight years. Democrats might mutter that renewed growth has come from regulatory reforms and big corporate tax breaks, but that makes Trump’s point: a continuance of Obama-style economic and regulatory policy would have hurt most Americans outside of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
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There is more.

What I find interesting is how those coastal elites resent the expansion of the economy in the rest of the nation.  From Silcon Valley to the Northeast education establishment there is anger directed toward the President's policies that appears irrational.  What they seem to be longing for is inefficienet energy and trade with the Chicoms.  Why are they longing for control freak regulation of industry?  

Meanwhile Texas economy is expanding rapidly while those coastal elites try to get a liberal like Beto O'Rourke elected to throttle the Texas model.