Politics & Power Quote by Jerry Costello

A jobs report can be debated; a scene can’t. Costello’s line is built to feel like a daily indignity unfolding in public, not an abstract shift in trade balances. “Every day” turns economic change into a metronome of loss, implying helpless repetition and urgency. “More Americans” widens the blast radius beyond a single factory town, quietly inviting listeners to see themselves next in line. And “watch” is the knife twist: the harm isn’t just unemployment, it’s powerlessness - people as spectators to decisions made in boardrooms and trade negotiations.

The most loaded phrase is “shipped overseas.” It’s deliberately physical, almost crude: jobs treated like cargo, packed into containers and sent away. That image compresses a messy reality (automation, management strategy, currency, supply chains, consumer price pressure) into a single villainous motion. The subtext is clear: someone is doing this to us, and government has the authority - and obligation - to stop it.

As a politician, Costello is also choosing a side in a long argument about globalization. The line positions offshoring as a moral failure rather than a competitive adaptation, and it implicitly rebukes elites who talk about “creative destruction” while communities absorb the destruction part. It’s a sentence designed for the late-20th/early-21st century industrial hangover: NAFTA-era anxiety, China’s rise, and the widening gap between booming metros and hollowed-out manufacturing corridors. The intent isn’t nuance; it’s mobilization - to justify tougher trade policy, incentives to keep production domestic, and a more confrontational posture toward corporations and trading partners.