My WSJ comment to "Trump’s Irrelevant Tariffs: The President won the real jobs war, which wasn’t with Mexico or Germany."

My WSJ, Opinion comment to "Trump’s Irrelevant Tariffs: The President won the real jobs war, which wasn’t with Mexico or Germany" by Daniel Henninger:

When you cannot find enough workers to break rocks with a hammer, you buy a hydraulic rock crusher. For many years, until recently, US business capital investment has been declining, especially after accounting for depreciation replacement. Is there a shortage of available and future workers or a shortfall in needed catch-up investment in capital equipment that will increase productivity? When the Bracero guest worker program ended in 1964, the growers replaced labor with harvesting machines. It is competitively natural for industries to become more capital intensive as they mature. Some companies cannot afford to make the needed investment and continue to seek workers, but will not be able to be as productive and compete on price and quality. Eventually, they will go out of business. The US is undergoing a delayed Schumpeterian creative destruction transition, as profitable companies become more capital intensive.