Back in April, Donald Trump touted his aggressive tariff policy as a catalyst for the reshoring of manufacturing jobs. Eight months later, reshoring progress is nowhere to be seen.
The jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released last week found that while nonfarm payrolls increased by 119,000, there were 6,000 fewer manufacturing jobs, adding to the tally of 59,000 lost factory jobs since Trump’s April vows to ignite domestic manufacturing. The Labor Bureau’s data is consistent with the Institute for Supply Management November report, which indicated an eighth consecutive month of contracting manufacturing jobs.
“The US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic…as manufacturing industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction & transportation has nearly zeroed out,” economic commentator Joseph Politano noted in a LinkedIn post last week.
Yeah, of course they’re fucking plummeting, there’s no plan or structure to these tariffs. You can’t just put tariffs on everything and expect manufacturing to return to the U.S. You might be able to get automakers to reshore car manufacturing if you put tariffs on foriegn-made cars, but if you’re also putting tariffs on imported steel, then they’re not going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build plants in the U.S. just to spend more on materials. They’re just going to charge people more for cars.