For all the turmoil marking the first weeks of President Trump, the big boot is yet to drop. That's when the angry heartland realises the factory jobs aren't coming back, whatever Trump promised.

It will take time for that realisation to dawn on Trump's followers. Minor events, such as the 700 Carrier jobs, will be well-publicised PR stunts and the overall employment picture will tend to overshadow what's specifically happening in manufacturing. Employment momentum was building nicely over the past two years – nothing to do with Trump – as witnessed by the Federal Reserve starting to return monetary policy to something like normal.

But for those suffering nostalgia for the ideal of secure, high-wage manufacturing in the rust belt – it's not going to happen. On one hand, manufacturing automation is not about to be reversed, while on the other, the US has lost the capability to feed, run and maintain many modern factories.

The most commonly-given reason for Trump's "bringing the jobs back" chant being a lie is that most of the jobs weren't "stolen" by China and Mexico in the first place and they therefore can't be "brought back". There have been various studies attempting to allocate responsibility between automation and cheap foreign labour. The highest score I've seen for automation's role is a massive 85 per cent, as summarised by the Financial Times: