AI Video Featuring American Factory Workers Goes Viral
Flood of Satire Targeting Trump's 'Revival of U.S. Manufacturing'
U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a 'tariff war' against the world, aiming to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and online memes mocking this move are flooding the internet. In particular, Chinese netizens, who are engaged in a trade war with the U.S. involving large-scale retaliatory tariffs, have been highly critical.
A scene from an AI-generated video mocking U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy. American female workers are working in a factory. Screenshot from TikTok account axiang67.
According to NBC News on the 10th (local time), a video created using artificial intelligence (AI) by a Chinese netizen to satirize President Trump's tariff war has been spreading recently on Chinese social networking services (SNS) such as Tiktok and Weibo.
The 32-second video shows tired-looking Americans operating sewing machines in old, dim factories making clothes and assembling mobile phones. Traditional Chinese music plays in the background, and at the end of the video, the phrase "Make America Great Again" appears as a subtitle. This is Trump's campaign slogan, and the video mocks the idea that this is the 'great America' Trump envisions.
The video has garnered millions of views on platforms like Tiktok and X (formerly Twitter), becoming a hot topic even among Americans.
Additionally, many images mocking the irony surrounding America's 'manufacturing shift' have appeared online, including AI-generated photos of President Trump and Vice President JD Vance making hats with sewing machines in factories. These images highlight that if the U.S. enforces its tariff policies, low-skilled jobs that were previously outsourced to developing countries will return to America.
However, the Trump administration counters these concerns by stating that the manufacturing jobs returning to the U.S. will involve advanced technology. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recently claimed in a CBS News interview, "Our highly educated Americans will work in advanced technology factories returning to the U.S., ushering in the greatest job revival in history."
A penguin meme posted on X (formerly Twitter) after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the policy of imposing reciprocal tariffs. Screenshot from X
Meanwhile, this is not the first time memes mocking President Trump's tariff policies have spread. On the 2nd, when Trump imposed tariffs on an uninhabited Antarctic island inhabited only by penguins, 'penguin memes' mocking Trump went viral online. Representative images include scenes where Trump shouts "Pay the tariffs" at penguins, and the penguins respond, "We plan to move our business elsewhere," or penguins jumping into the sea to escape Trump's tariff policies.
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