BRINGING BACK BLACKSMITHS:

As President Trump tries to tilt global trade in the United States' favor, he is increasingly putting his finger on the scale to help once-iconic industries that are declining as a share of the American economy, at the expense of some of the country's fastest-growing sectors.

The president's attempts to boost domestic steel manufacturing and coal mining have come largely through policies that limit foreign competition, like tariffs, and proposals to prevent coal-fired power plants from closing. Those efforts have produced only modest job gains so far in two blue-collar sectors that Mr. Trump championed in his run to the White House. But they have injected uncertainty into a host of other growing industries -- such as advanced manufacturing, natural gas production and renewable energy generation -- that have helped drive American job creation since the Great Recession.

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