Trump Campaigned on Saving Factory Jobs, but U.S. Manufacturing Just Went Through a Year-Long Recession
“although it is true that America’s economy has, on the whole, performed admirably well under Trump, with unemployment numbers hovering near historic lows, one of the notable dark spots over the last year has been manufacturing jobs—particularly those in the upper midwest.
Last week, the Federal Reserve reported that U.S. manufacturing was in a recession for all of 2019. This wasn’t slow growth; the sector actually became smaller. The slowdown was relatively mild, with factory production shrinking by about 1.3 percent. But it was the worst performance since 2015, the year that Trump started his presidential campaign.”
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“the uncertainty and increased costs surrounding Trump’s trade war, which was billed as a way of supporting American factory jobs, has instead wreaked havoc on an export-heavy sector that relies on the global flow of goods to operate. Trump’s interventions were intended to prop up U.S. manufacturing. But they backfired, harming the people he claimed to help—who also happen to be some of the people who played a crucial part in his election.”
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“Farming, another industry that Trump campaigned on helping, was so harmed by the trade war that the Trump administration ended up spending some $28 billion—more than double the price tag of President Obama’s auto bailout—to keep them afloat.”
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“Trump’s attempts to prop up the manufacturing sector through tariffs and trade restrictions didn’t just fail to work; they actively harmed the people they were intended to help. So even as Trump has overseen an economy that has many bright spots, the sector and worker demographic he tried to boost ended up struggling.”