As expected by most, Trump’s tariff policy has proven to be a complete and total failure. Just one reason most Americans regard Trump’s handling of the economy an utter disaster.
Introducing the highest U.S. tariffs since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump made a clear promise in the spring: “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”
They haven’t.
Manufacturing employment has
declined every month since what Trump dubbed “Liberation Day” in April, saying his widespread tariffs would begin to rebalance global trade in favor of American workers. U.S. factories employ 12.7 million people today, 72,000 fewer than when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement.
The trade measures that the president said would
spur manufacturinghave instead hampered it, according to most mainstream economists. That’s because roughly half of U.S. imports are “intermediate” goods that American companies use to make finished products, like aluminum that is shaped into soup cans or circuit boards that are inserted into computers.
So while tariffs have protected American manufacturers like steel mills from foreign competition, they have raised costs for many others. Auto and auto parts employment, for example, has dipped by about 20,000 jobs since April.
“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,” said economist Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana.
