>Donald Trump’s April “Liberation Day” declaration, in which he predicted that sweeping import tariffs would generate substantial manufacturing job growth, has not materialized.
>According to the Washington Post, the U.S. has actually lost manufacturing jobs since Trump’s announcement. Additionally, the government tariff revenue the president has touted may be jeopardized if the Supreme Court issues an anticipated adverse ruling in the coming days.
>Post reporter David J. Lynch reports that U.S. factories currently employ 12.7 million workers—down 72,000 from when Trump proclaimed, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already.”
>The president’s trade measures have instead hindered manufacturing, according to most mainstream economists. Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, told the Post, “2025 should have been a good year for manufacturing employment, and that didn’t happen. I think you really have to indict tariffs for that.”
>Hicks cautioned that current job losses represent only the beginning of a broader decline. “The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand.”
suitupyo on
Manufacturing is heavily automated. Selling jobs was the political pitch (lie), but the real reason we need onshore manufacturing is that it is not in the US’s national defense interest for everything in the world to be made in China. BYD’s factory Zhengzou is the size of the city of San Francisco. Imagine that. In peacetime, it produces chassis for cars. It wouldn’t be hard to switch and mass produce chassis for APCs and tanks.
Reachforthesky777 on
What was it that Burns said? “Your jobs are safe. They’re just going to be done by different people in a different place”?
It’s difficult to believe that the economic situation we’re faced with today is anything other than done by design. In the business world, we have a concept called “Enshitification”, which describes the gradual decay of a product, platform, or service as they shift from benefiting users to extracting maximum value for shareholders. It’s difficult to not see that this is being applied to the US economy with the apparent goal of deepening economic divides and pivoting the general population into some modern-day form of serfdom.
Jonathantx007 on
Trump promised a manufacturing comeback after Liberation Day but factory jobs have actually fallen, not risen. Big talk, zero delivery the numbers don’t lie.
Jdelu on
To be fair, if (and that’s a big if) tariffs were to lead to manufacturing job growth, what would be the timeline for that to play out? These aren’t decisions companies make overnight, we still aren’t sure if the tariffs will remain.
HeadPaleontologist40 on
Trump does not have a basic understanding of how even simple things work.
Corporations left the US for a reason. It was economically advantageous to find cheaper labor and input costs to maximize profit. This has been the case since the beginning of time. No sane CEO is going to bring back manufacturing at this point knowing Trump is probably gone in 4 years.
Xeynon on
So you’re telling me centuries of accumulated knowledge and emprical data and legions of PhD economists were right and the guy who went bankrupt running casinos multiple times was wrong on an economic matter?
While I never!
NitWhittler on
Trump’s tariffs on raw materials have raised the cost of U.S. manufacturing, making it even less competitive than before.
He’s creating the opposite effect of what he said he was going to do.
Turning the world against us is also having a negative effect on manufacturing that will last for years.
8 Comments
>Donald Trump’s April “Liberation Day” declaration, in which he predicted that sweeping import tariffs would generate substantial manufacturing job growth, has not materialized.
>According to the Washington Post, the U.S. has actually lost manufacturing jobs since Trump’s announcement. Additionally, the government tariff revenue the president has touted may be jeopardized if the Supreme Court issues an anticipated adverse ruling in the coming days.
>Post reporter David J. Lynch reports that U.S. factories currently employ 12.7 million workers—down 72,000 from when Trump proclaimed, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already.”
>The president’s trade measures have instead hindered manufacturing, according to most mainstream economists. Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, told the Post, “2025 should have been a good year for manufacturing employment, and that didn’t happen. I think you really have to indict tariffs for that.”
>Hicks cautioned that current job losses represent only the beginning of a broader decline. “The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand.”
Manufacturing is heavily automated. Selling jobs was the political pitch (lie), but the real reason we need onshore manufacturing is that it is not in the US’s national defense interest for everything in the world to be made in China. BYD’s factory Zhengzou is the size of the city of San Francisco. Imagine that. In peacetime, it produces chassis for cars. It wouldn’t be hard to switch and mass produce chassis for APCs and tanks.
What was it that Burns said? “Your jobs are safe. They’re just going to be done by different people in a different place”?
It’s difficult to believe that the economic situation we’re faced with today is anything other than done by design. In the business world, we have a concept called “Enshitification”, which describes the gradual decay of a product, platform, or service as they shift from benefiting users to extracting maximum value for shareholders. It’s difficult to not see that this is being applied to the US economy with the apparent goal of deepening economic divides and pivoting the general population into some modern-day form of serfdom.
Trump promised a manufacturing comeback after Liberation Day but factory jobs have actually fallen, not risen. Big talk, zero delivery the numbers don’t lie.
To be fair, if (and that’s a big if) tariffs were to lead to manufacturing job growth, what would be the timeline for that to play out? These aren’t decisions companies make overnight, we still aren’t sure if the tariffs will remain.
Trump does not have a basic understanding of how even simple things work.
Corporations left the US for a reason. It was economically advantageous to find cheaper labor and input costs to maximize profit. This has been the case since the beginning of time. No sane CEO is going to bring back manufacturing at this point knowing Trump is probably gone in 4 years.
So you’re telling me centuries of accumulated knowledge and emprical data and legions of PhD economists were right and the guy who went bankrupt running casinos multiple times was wrong on an economic matter?
While I never!
Trump’s tariffs on raw materials have raised the cost of U.S. manufacturing, making it even less competitive than before.
He’s creating the opposite effect of what he said he was going to do.
Turning the world against us is also having a negative effect on manufacturing that will last for years.