"Utterly Shocking": Silicon Valley Slams White House for Ignoring A.I. Threat

If there's one thing that labor economists and leaders in Silicon Valley generally seem to agree on, it's that increasingly sophisticated technology is coming to replace American jobs. According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, 38 percent of U.S. jobs are at high risk of being replaced by automation in the next 15 years, compared with 30 percent of jobs in the U.K. and 21 percent in Japan. The United States, like the United Kingdom, is dominated by service jobs in sectors like manufacturing, transportation, finance, and food service, and U.S. jobs are particularly at risk because, according to PwC's chief U.K. economist John Hawksworth, the tasks American workers perform are just easier to automate. Still, the White House seems completely uninterested in the imminent threat facing U.S. employment and wages, choosing to cast blame instead on China and Mexico for the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs. "We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped with those four magnificent words--made in the U.S.A.," President Donald Trump declared on a recent trip to a Boeing plant in South Carolina.