International-News

Viral video imagines the future with Trump’s tariffs: ‘Americans on an assembly line’

A clip depopulates on social media showing the return of companies to the US as promised by Trump, but with a bitter aftertaste: American workers forced to do the jobs hitherto entrusted to Chinese labour

Is Donald Trump promising to bring companies and jobs now in China back to the US? On social media comes the response – ironic and provocative – in video format. A clip posted on TikTok by user @axiang67 and re-posted on X, in which he imagines the economic future of the United States following the duties promoted by the American president, is making the rounds on the web.

‘Make America Great Again’… by sewing and assembling

In the video, which has garnered millions of views, American workers are seen forced to sew garments in huge, anonymous grey workshops or assemble smartphones in long assembly lines. The faces are grim, the atmosphere alienating, while a melancholic Chinese melody plays in the background. A ‘great again’ America, as in Trump’s slogan, but at a high price.

Between propaganda and digital satire

The clip takes advantage of Artificial Intelligence to create evocative and surreal settings, but the message is clear: bringing industry back home also means bringing back tiring and unrewarding jobs, now relocated. A way to question, in satirical tones, the protectionist policies and new duties that are exacerbating the clash between Washington and Beijing.