Up until now, the point of the tariffs and the mass deportations, in the eyes of reactionary visionaries, was to create a massive American labor shortage by encouraging the construction of new manufacturing plants and cutting down the size of the workforce. That would lead to large wage increases, which would make the Godly Society economically possible.
In his NYT column, Cass is making a subtle but important change to this argument. He is now contending that the labor shortage will cause American businesses to invest in new technology, which will result in higher productivity, which will in the end result in higher wages. He is no longer trying to give labor more bargaining power; he is instead making the case for traditional GOP trickle-down economics, albeit from an unusual starting point.
Productivity increases can, in time, result in wage increases. The experience of the last 50 years tells us, however, that the benefits of technological change are not automatically shared equitably between capitalists and labor. In addition, there is no guarantee that technology-forcing will work; small businesses, in particular, will have difficulty finding the money to invest, and will suffer greatly from the labor shortages. Finally, the GOP has traditionally objected to efforts to force technological change as an unwarranted interference in the market. How does Cass propose to get past that political problem?