U.S. Factory Jobs are Retreating: Yahoo Finance

Just before President Trump announced his sweeping tariffs on “Liberation Day” last spring, the White House celebrated February’s gain of 10,000 manufacturing jobs, noting that more than 100,000 positions in the sector had been shed in the final year of the Biden administration, Emma Ockerman reported for Yahoo Finance.

The US has not done many of the things needed to restore manufacturing prowess. (Photo: General Motors) 

“Manufacturing Is Roaring Back,” the White House website declared. But the gains were short-lived. Manufacturing jobs began to slide again in May and have not stopped declining.

At least 72,000 manufacturing positions have been lost since the tariffs were announced in April, including 8,000 in December alone.

“What we’re seeing is certainly a continuation of trends that began before the Trump administration,” Gordon Hanson, an economist and professor of urban policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Yahoo Finance. “But the tariffs haven’t helped.”

Millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the US since 1979 due to automation, the continuing effects of trade with China, and the fact that the US has not done many of the things needed to restore manufacturing prowess.

Tariffs are hardly the solution to those problems, Hanson said — though Trump insists otherwise.

He vowed in April that jobs and factories would “come roaring back into our country” as levies on imports boosted domestically produced goods.

While tariffs can reduce import competition, they can also increase the cost of key components for domestic manufacturers, as has happened with US electric vehicle plants.

As for sectors that have largely left the US, such as apparel and textile manufacturing, “a lot of those industries are just substantially gone,” Hanson said, meaning there are few existing factories where production could be ramped up, and hiring could resume.