Trump is failing on manufacturing jobs

Jake Starkey

Jake Starkey

Verified User

Trump promised to save manufacturing jobs. The numbers show he's failing.​


The September labor market report was late, thanks to the government shutdown. And when it finally arrived on Thursday, it was also confusing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs in September, well above expectations. But the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest since October 2021.

Of course, these monthly reports are noisy, and it’s not unusual for their indicators to point in different directions. That’s why you want to look at the trends, and one important sector, both economically and politically, has consistently trended down over the last few years. We’re talking about manufacturing, which shed another 6,000 jobs in September — the fifth month in a row of factory job losses.

But the decline is not surprising. Manufacturing jobs are down 194,000 (1.5%) from their most recent peak, in February 2023. That means this trend predates Trump’s second term, so his tariffs aren’t the whole problem. But the import taxes are unquestionably part of the problem. In fact, the last time that factory employment was this soft outside a recession was right after Trump implemented tariffs during his first term. After robust growth in 2017-18, between January 2019 and February 2020 American factories shed 47,000 jobs.

One reason for these losses is that half of our imports are not the “final goods” lining the shelves at Walmart and Target. Rather, they’re “intermediate goods,” or inputs into our own domestic production. It’s a simple, remarkable fact that neither the president nor anyone around him has ever addressed: When you make it more expensive for factories to produce their output, you’re going to hurt their workers. A Federal Reserve paper analyzing Trump’s first-term tariffs found that any positive impact of tariffs protecting industries from imports was more than offset by tariffs raising the prices of intermediate imports and by the retaliatory tariffs other countries levied on U.S. exports.

For more contemporaneous evidence, look no further than the monthly survey of U.S. manufacturers run by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). For 31 of the past 34 months, survey respondents report contracting employment at their firms. But the most illuminating parts of these surveys are the respondents’ comments on how things are going for them. Here are a few of these reflections from the October report, with the first from a chemical products manufacturing firm:

Business continues to remain difficult, as customers are cancelling and reducing orders due to uncertainty in the global economic environment and regarding the ever-changing tariff landscape.
Click to expand...
From a machine producer:

Tariffs continue to be a large impact to our business. The products we import are not readily manufactured in the U.S., so attempts to reshore have been unsuccessful. Overall, prices on all products have gone up, some significantly. We are trying to keep up with the wild fluctuations and pass along what costs we can to our customers.
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And from a farm machinery producer:

The tariff trade war has negatively impacted agricultural export markets, driving down demand and price. This negatively impacts farmer revenue and the likelihood of farmers investing in new equipment.
Click to expand...
What about the longer-term negative trend, the one that started in early 2023? Here, we turn to our previous work on the long history of U.S. manufacturing employment. Examining manufacturing data from 1949 to 2025, we found that declines in U.S. manufacturing employment occurred in periods when manufacturers increased their production efficiency — periods of high productivity growth — and demand for domestically manufactured goods was low. The “China shock” period of 2000-10 is Exhibit A of this dynamic: Technological advances made manufacturers more productive, while a flood of cheap goods from China replaced domestically manufactured goods in U.S. consumption, a combination that wiped out 5 million factory jobs.
www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-promised-to-save-manufacturing-jobs-the-numbers-show-he-s-failing/ar-AA1QUyti?ocid=msedgntp&pc=BINBAN&cvid=69213d7ff0d64139a53bf6de2bb67cb9&ei=59
 
Improving Americas manufacturing base was pretty clearly not the point....this a desperate dying empire conducting wealth extraction from the colonies.
 
Jake Starkey said:

Trump promised to save manufacturing jobs. The numbers show he's failing.​


The September labor market report was late, thanks to the government shutdown. And when it finally arrived on Thursday, it was also confusing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs in September, well above expectations. But the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest since October 2021.

Of course, these monthly reports are noisy, and it’s not unusual for their indicators to point in different directions. That’s why you want to look at the trends, and one important sector, both economically and politically, has consistently trended down over the last few years. We’re talking about manufacturing, which shed another 6,000 jobs in September — the fifth month in a row of factory job losses.

But the decline is not surprising. Manufacturing jobs are down 194,000 (1.5%) from their most recent peak, in February 2023. That means this trend predates Trump’s second term, so his tariffs aren’t the whole problem. But the import taxes are unquestionably part of the problem. In fact, the last time that factory employment was this soft outside a recession was right after Trump implemented tariffs during his first term. After robust growth in 2017-18, between January 2019 and February 2020 American factories shed 47,000 jobs.

One reason for these losses is that half of our imports are not the “final goods” lining the shelves at Walmart and Target. Rather, they’re “intermediate goods,” or inputs into our own domestic production. It’s a simple, remarkable fact that neither the president nor anyone around him has ever addressed: When you make it more expensive for factories to produce their output, you’re going to hurt their workers. A Federal Reserve paper analyzing Trump’s first-term tariffs found that any positive impact of tariffs protecting industries from imports was more than offset by tariffs raising the prices of intermediate imports and by the retaliatory tariffs other countries levied on U.S. exports.

For more contemporaneous evidence, look no further than the monthly survey of U.S. manufacturers run by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). For 31 of the past 34 months, survey respondents report contracting employment at their firms. But the most illuminating parts of these surveys are the respondents’ comments on how things are going for them. Here are a few of these reflections from the October report, with the first from a chemical products manufacturing firm:


From a machine producer:


And from a farm machinery producer:


What about the longer-term negative trend, the one that started in early 2023? Here, we turn to our previous work on the long history of U.S. manufacturing employment. Examining manufacturing data from 1949 to 2025, we found that declines in U.S. manufacturing employment occurred in periods when manufacturers increased their production efficiency — periods of high productivity growth — and demand for domestically manufactured goods was low. The “China shock” period of 2000-10 is Exhibit A of this dynamic: Technological advances made manufacturers more productive, while a flood of cheap goods from China replaced domestically manufactured goods in U.S. consumption, a combination that wiped out 5 million factory jobs.
www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-promised-to-save-manufacturing-jobs-the-numbers-show-he-s-failing/ar-AA1QUyti?ocid=msedgntp&pc=BINBAN&cvid=69213d7ff0d64139a53bf6de2bb67cb9&ei=59
Click to expand...
Trump over promises and under delivers and constantly bullshits

When's the last time you heard Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state or invade Greenland?
 
Trump is failing in every aspect of what he promised. He knew that telling the people what they wanted to hear was a potentially winning plan. Biden had brought TYrump's crappy economics near normalcy. However, the inflation rate was too high. So Trump made big promises he knew he could not keep. He promised anything and everything. But Project 2025 was the real plan. Now the super-rich are in power and the people are on the menu.
 
Jake Starkey said:

Trump promised to save manufacturing jobs. The numbers show he's failing.​


The September labor market report was late, thanks to the government shutdown. And when it finally arrived on Thursday, it was also confusing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy added 119,000 jobs in September, well above expectations. But the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest since October 2021.

Of course, these monthly reports are noisy, and it’s not unusual for their indicators to point in different directions. That’s why you want to look at the trends, and one important sector, both economically and politically, has consistently trended down over the last few years. We’re talking about manufacturing, which shed another 6,000 jobs in September — the fifth month in a row of factory job losses.

But the decline is not surprising. Manufacturing jobs are down 194,000 (1.5%) from their most recent peak, in February 2023. That means this trend predates Trump’s second term, so his tariffs aren’t the whole problem. But the import taxes are unquestionably part of the problem. In fact, the last time that factory employment was this soft outside a recession was right after Trump implemented tariffs during his first term. After robust growth in 2017-18, between January 2019 and February 2020 American factories shed 47,000 jobs.

One reason for these losses is that half of our imports are not the “final goods” lining the shelves at Walmart and Target. Rather, they’re “intermediate goods,” or inputs into our own domestic production. It’s a simple, remarkable fact that neither the president nor anyone around him has ever addressed: When you make it more expensive for factories to produce their output, you’re going to hurt their workers. A Federal Reserve paper analyzing Trump’s first-term tariffs found that any positive impact of tariffs protecting industries from imports was more than offset by tariffs raising the prices of intermediate imports and by the retaliatory tariffs other countries levied on U.S. exports.

For more contemporaneous evidence, look no further than the monthly survey of U.S. manufacturers run by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). For 31 of the past 34 months, survey respondents report contracting employment at their firms. But the most illuminating parts of these surveys are the respondents’ comments on how things are going for them. Here are a few of these reflections from the October report, with the first from a chemical products manufacturing firm:


From a machine producer:


And from a farm machinery producer:


What about the longer-term negative trend, the one that started in early 2023? Here, we turn to our previous work on the long history of U.S. manufacturing employment. Examining manufacturing data from 1949 to 2025, we found that declines in U.S. manufacturing employment occurred in periods when manufacturers increased their production efficiency — periods of high productivity growth — and demand for domestically manufactured goods was low. The “China shock” period of 2000-10 is Exhibit A of this dynamic: Technological advances made manufacturers more productive, while a flood of cheap goods from China replaced domestically manufactured goods in U.S. consumption, a combination that wiped out 5 million factory jobs.
www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-promised-to-save-manufacturing-jobs-the-numbers-show-he-s-failing/ar-AA1QUyti?ocid=msedgntp&pc=BINBAN&cvid=69213d7ff0d64139a53bf6de2bb67cb9&ei=59
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So the "machine producer" doesn't produce anything. It's an import business.
The "farm machinery producer" left the U.S. Now, buying their equipment involves a 10% tariff.

Now let's look at the numbers:

A lot of jobs were lost in government (yay!) and with illegal immigrants getting deported. Further, high tech is laying off people due to reorganizing under AI.

Other industries are hiring. High tech will also, once the reorganization is more or less completed. The old jobs are obsolete, but many more jobs will open to improve AI and in robotics, the next phase of high tech.

Jobs are opening up for CITIZENS. Illegal aliens are being deported.

Trump's policies are succeeding. More companies are moving to the U.S. than leaving.
 
Nordberg said:
Trump is failing in every aspect of what he promised. He knew that telling the people what they wanted to hear was a potentially winning plan. Biden had brought TYrump's crappy economics near normalcy. However, the inflation rate was too high. So Trump made big promises he knew he could not keep. He promised anything and everything. But Project 2025 was the real plan. Now the super-rich are in power and the people are on the menu.
Click to expand...
An economic depression is not "normalcy", Sybil.
 
Cypress said:
Trump over promises and under delivers and constantly bullshits
Click to expand...
:blah:
Cypress said:
When's the last time you heard Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state or invade Greenland?
Click to expand...
There was never any intention to actually make Canada "the 51st state". You STILL don't realize this?

However, some of the Canadian provinces ARE entertaining the thought of breaking away from Canada.
 
The belief that there was ever going to be a resurgence of manufacturing jobs was nuts from the start because most manufacturing jobs are being automated - aka no humans needed.
 
Have manufacturing jobs been growing since January?

No — U.S. manufacturing jobs have been declining since January 2025. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that manufacturing employment is down by about 78,000 jobs over the past year, with consistent monthly losses rather than growth.

www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceshighlights.pdf
 
gfm7175 said:
:blah:

There was never any intention to actually make Canada "the 51st state". You STILL don't realize this?

However, some of the Canadian provinces ARE entertaining the thought of breaking away from Canada.
Click to expand...
There has always been those in America who support the idea of Manifest Destiny with the US taking full control of all of N.America. And a bigger number who would support the US taking over Canada while not looking south.

Canada provides immense strategic security to the US beyond the military ones.

Its resource base, including critical rare earth materials, plus oil and gas and lumber and potash, etc, etc, would take the US to such levels of true global independence in almost all areas. Further as global warming continues the vast uninhabited but massively resource rich areas of Canada are opening up making the country vastly more rich. Plus WATER. Water may end up being the most valuable.
 
Many projections show much of the Southern US below the Colorado River become dry desert like landscapes and almost unliveable in the future meanwhile areas like Toronto and upper NY will be more like Florida. And the vast Canadian north, resource rich lands over flowing with water may open to mass migration waves in the way the US West frontier was opened for settlement to generate economic activity.

What the US could see is a huge population base shift from the unhospitable south, to the booming new North. Canada may become the country with 300M+ and the US with less than 100M and that could make Canada the dominant partner. Thus why i think the US would want to take over Canada before that could happen.

70-OF-CANADA.jpeg


Below that black line is where 70% of the entire Canadian population (~28M of ~40M) with the rest of the country, north of that becoming more and more hospitable.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Improving Americas manufacturing base was pretty clearly not the point....this a desperate dying empire conducting wealth extraction from the colonies.
Click to expand...
I would not have called America "dying" prior to Trump but it was clearly at an inflexion point.

With the Supreme Court opening up unlimited money in elections there has been decades of a growing Oligarch class able to increasingly buy political policy to benefit them at the expense of the middle class and young people trying to start their careers.

The wealth gap has seen the upper middle class and seniors increase wealth greatly in almost a straight line correlation of the lower middle class and young people, just entering the work force seeing declining wealth.

Had the US had a true 'Populist' leader emerge in the way Trump pretended to be, and had they been able to make even modest moves towards rebalancing wealth towards the Middle class and below, i believe America would have had a resurgence. Instead Trump imposed Tariffs which are a huge tax on the MC and below and is giving even more favorable policy to his oligarch buddies.
 
QP! said:
I would not have called America "dying" prior to Trump but it was clearly at an inflexion point.

With the Supreme Court opening up unlimited money in elections there has been decades of a growing Oligarch class able to increasingly buy political policy to benefit them at the expense of the middle class and young people trying to start their careers.

The wealth gap has seen the upper middle class and seniors increase wealth greatly in almost a straight line correlation of the lower middle class and young people, just entering the work force seeing declining wealth.

Had the US had a true 'Populist' leader emerge in the way Trump pretended to be, and had they been able to make even modest moves towards rebalancing wealth towards the Middle class and below, i believe America would have had a resurgence. Instead Trump imposed Tariffs which are a huge tax on the MC and below and is giving even more favorable policy to his oligarch buddies.
Click to expand...
The mistake you make is that Trump is a symptom not the problem. What we need is a revolution, for the people to see that America is not run by the people for the people, it is run by globalist cabal oligarchs in their interest.....they dont give a fuck about us.

I fear that this ends in the enslavement of the masses, though I do note that my grapevine is rumbling with tales of a gathering revolution in Europe.

Perhaps we will save ourselves.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
The mistake you make is that Trump is a symptom not the problem. What we need is a revolution, for the people to see that America is not run by the people for the people, it is run by globalist cabal oligarchs in their interest.....they dont give a fuck about us.

I fear that this ends in the enslavement of the masses, though I do note that my grapevine is rumbling with tales of a gathering revolution in Europe.

Perhaps we will save ourselves.
Click to expand...
I clearly identified the challenges America had preceded Trump so i would not call him 'the problem'.

But what Trump promised was to address that core issue of the growing wealth shift from the MC and below to the aged and uber rich and instead he did the opposite. So Trump is throwing accelerant on 'the problem' in a way that will make the US decline even quicker.
 
QP! said:
I clearly identified the challenges America had preceded Trump so i would not call him 'the problem'.

But what Trump promised was to address that core issue of the growing wealth shift from the MC and below to the aged and uber rich and instead he did the opposite. So Trump is throwing accelerant on 'the problem' in a way that will make the US decline even quicker.
Click to expand...
At home and abroad......both in the collapse of America and the collapse of the empire Trump......to the extent that he is an independent actor and not taking orders from the people who run America....pouring gas on the fires.
 
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