Gavin Newsom has changed direction once again. After a brief feint as a Maga-whispering moderate, California’s governor has “woken up” in the wake of the LA immigration riots to become the self-anointed leader of the anti-Trump #Resistance.
Just weeks ago, Newsom had launched a podcast, inviting Right-wing firebrands like Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, and Steve Bannon as his initial guests. Progressives detested this shift. But now that he has effectively denounced Donald Trump as a “dictator”, The Daily Beast and MSNBC have been quick to celebrate his reinvention. The progressive clerisy’s homepage, The Atlantic, recently dubbed Newsom “the nation’s foremost Trump foil”.
Although changing colour might help with this chameleon’s bid for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination, it’s not good news for the long-suffering people of California. The working and middle classes don’t benefit from his performative talk of avoiding tariffs and ignoring federal immigration law. What Newsom should be looking at is how to bolster California’s struggling economy, which lags way behind rivals such as Texas and Florida in crucial areas like job creation.
And that would mean making peace with at least some of Donald Trump’s agenda.
To be sure, the president’s tariffs appear to be hurting California’s ports and tech companies dependent on overseas manufacturing, but the state clearly needs some sort of economic paradigm change. Virtually every high wage sector has lost jobs since 2022, including business services and information, the supposed linchpins of the state’s economy. All this occurred before Trump’s chaotic tariff barrage.
Trump’s commitment to investment in new military technology and space exploration, as well as reshoring manufacturing more generally, also opens enormous opportunities for California’s heavily Latino blue collar workers. Should Newsom choose to embrace the president’s policies, that is.
Consider space. Boosted by a huge surge of investment, space industry global revenues are up tenfold since the early 2000s, from $175 billion (£130.4 billion) in 2005 to almost $385 billion (£286.9 billion) in 2017. By 2040, the industry’s annual revenues globally are projected to surpass a trillion dollars. California has a 19 per cent international share in the sector, as well as 40 per cent of the industry in the US.
With Trump’s backing, that could grow even further. California already enjoys by far the country’s largest cohort of aerospace engineers, typically earning salaries around three times the national average. Many are employed by large contractors, but the most exciting developments can be seen in places like El Segundo, which calls itself “the aerospace capital of the world”, and Douglas Park, next to the Long Beach airport.
If Newsom would wake up from his dogmatic slumbers, he would realise that “deep tech” firms in space and aerospace likely have a far better future than traditional consumer and media-oriented firms like Salesforce, Meta, and Google. In part due to artificial intelligence, all have announced major cutbacks. Even many “creative jobs” – actors, writers, journalists – could be threatened by AI generated content.
In contrast, hardware engineers, skilled machinists, and the builders and designers of spacecraft, drones, space mining operations and new engine systems could share an expansive future. The aerospace boom is being driven by more than just a few brilliant geeks backed up by H1-B visa indentured servants. Aerospace firms have their share of PhDs, but they also employ welders and other production workers. In a state that has been very hard on blue collar workers, this should be embraced, even if it reflects Trumpian priorities.
There are further opportunities for California among Trump’s policy objectives. The president wants to revive the US shipbuilding industry, and California was once critical to constructing America’s “arsenal of democracy”. One place that could benefit is Solano County in the Bay Area, which once was home to Liberty ship production.
Even virulently anti-Trump Hollywood could see advantages. This Newsom-aligned industry is now losing employment at a fearful rate, down more than one-third over the past 10 years, with 18,000 full time positions disappearing in just the past three. Tariffs may not be what the industry needs – it’s already too dependent on cheaper, highly subsidised foreign productions – but the people who work in it would benefit if California and the Trump White House devised an incentive package to reverse off-shore production.
And then there is housing, a prime concern for most Californians. The federal government is the nation’s biggest landowner and owns roughly half of California. Republicans have floated the idea of selling federal lands as an option for closing the deficit. Federal lands adjacent to the state’s large urban areas also could create, in selected places, an opportunity for new housing that could dodge many of California’s currently stifling regulations.
But perhaps Trump’s biggest gift would be to push California politics back towards the centre, including on immigration. Due to Trumpian cutbacks, Newsom is being forced to abandon his dream of providing free health services to all undocumented immigrants. Now that the state is suffering a severe deficit, Washington is unlikely to send money to preserve Newsom’s dreamscape.
Of course Newsom blames the current budget deficit on Trump, although he does not explain why many other states, including archrivals Texas and Florida, enjoy surpluses. California would do far better if its governor focused on how to take advantage of Trump’s initiatives. After all, Maga will be in office at least until 2028. Californians can enjoy the fruits of Trump’s policies even as they grumble darkly about him.
This piece first appeared at Telegraph.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Gavin Newsom visits the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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