Hiltzik: So much for Trump’s ‘manufacturing wins’

Based on the words of President Trump, America is well on the way to becoming a “global superpower in manufacturing” — indeed, as he declared in a Father’s Day social media post, we are already experiencing the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.” (Capitalization’s his.)

Here’s what the government’s own statistics tell us: Manufacturing investment has crashed during his watch, with construction spending in the manufacturing sector down 26.4% from Trump’s inauguration through May, to $174.8 billion. That’s the lowest figure since February 2023, when the economy was in the midst of a post-pandemic recovery.

White House spokesman Kush Desai told me by email that “the last two jobs reports” showed manufacturing job growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a seasonally-adjusted decline of 2,000 manufacturing workers in May and a gain of 3,000 in June. But the June 2026 figure was 38,000 jobs, or about 0.3% below the level in June 2025, and 75,000 or about 0.6% below the level in January 2025, when Trump took office.

Desai said that “thanks to President Trump’s proven agenda of tariffs, deregulation, and tax cuts, American manufacturing will continue to rebound.”

There’s little mystery about what has come between Trump’s ambition and the real world. To a large extent it’s Trump’s economic program, particularly his tariff policies and, more recently, his war with Iran. Those have injected a level of uncertainty for corporate managements pondering whether to spend money on expansion that they haven’t had to confront in years.

From where we’re standing, we are not seeing signs of a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S.

— Didi Caldwell, Global Location Strategies

The tariffs and the war have driven up manufacturers’ costs for raw materials and overseas shipping. The general economic atmosphere doesn’t help. U.S. gross domestic product growth came in at a 2.1% annualized rate in the first quarter of this year, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta expects it to have fallen to 1.3% in the second quarter ended June 30.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan consumer confidence index reached 44.8 in May, its lowest level ever (though it improved to 49.5 in June). Wages have been rising modestly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but those gains have been eaten up by higher prices, especially for gasoline and food.

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To put things another way, the actual figures show the U.S. economy to be sputtering, and the “vibe economy” as measured by consumer confidence is doing even worse.

Now that Trump’s second term is about to reach its 18-month mark, let’s unpack the factors causing the discrepancy between his ambitions and claims, and the reality.

Trump declared economic victory just as his term was starting. On March 20, 2025, he proclaimed a “manufacturing renaissance” in the U.S. That was based on what he said were “trillions of dollars in new investments” he had “already secured in tech-based manufacturing.”

A White House statement said “the list of manufacturing wins is endless.” The provided list was a roster of announcements, not groundbreakings, much less completed ventures.

Business executives quite properly have taken these pledges with mounds of salt. “Announcements are what people say they’re going to do, but dollars spent is what’s actually happening,” Didi Caldwell, chief executive of a firm that helps companies find factory sites, told the Financial Times. “From where we’re standing, we are not seeing signs of a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S.”

Indeed, at least some of these announcements have had the flavor of performative efforts to satisfy Trump’s amour propre and extract government concessions.

For example, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook appeared with Trump at the White House in August to announce a $600-billion U.S. spending plan to take place over four years. That was a $100-billion increase over its previously-announced program.

More to the point, however, it incorporated spending with suppliers that Apple had been working with for years. Mentioned in the news announcement was a commitment to buy cover glass for iPhones from Corning. But Corning has been supplying that glass since the first iPhone appeared in 2007. In any case, the announcement appeared to secure a commitment from Trump to exempt Apple from tariffs imposed on imported chips.

Apple’s announcement Wednesday that it will spend $30 billion to buy chips from Broadcom was similarly ambiguous. The announcement didn’t provide details about the terms of the commitment or the timing of its expenditures. I asked Apple for details and whether the deal was related to a desire to remain in Trump’s favor, but didn’t hear back.

A similar phenomenon occurred during Trump’s first term; Trump had built much of his 2016 presidential campaign on a promise to increase manufacturing jobs in the United States. He blamed shrinkage in the manufacturing sector on trade agreements such as NAFTA and the policies of the Chinese, and took credit when an American manufacturer agreed to create or save jobs in the United States.

As I reported in 2019, many of those arrangements turned out to be exaggerated or bogus, or predated Trump’s claim. Some disappeared as soon as public attention turned elsewhere, or were outweighed by job cuts made elsewhere by the same companies.

Trump’s tariffs appear to have had a direct effect on manufacturing employment in the U.S. Since Trump’s inauguration, the manufacturing sector has shed about 75,000 jobs, or 0.6%. After April 2, 2025, when he announced global “liberation day” tariffs supposedly as a response to years of unfair treatment of American exports, the decline picked up pace, with a shrinkage of 68,000 manufacturing jobs.

The Supreme Court invalidated those tariffs in February, but others are still in place, including tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and on goods from China. Nor has he ceased threatening partners with trade wars. As recently as Tuesday, he said he would cut off all trade with Spain because of that country’s disagreement with him over its defense spending and its criticism of his Iran war.

As it happens, Spain is one of the few countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus. That means that any cutoff, which trade experts think will be unlikely, would come at a cost to the U.S.

One might have hoped that Trump had learned a lesson from his first-term trade war with China. That conflict provoked a sharp contraction in the manufacturing economy, with the Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index falling to 49.1 by mid-2019. (A reading below 50 signifies contraction.)

The ISM index began to recover toward the end of Trump’s term but fell again during the pandemic. Lately it has been falling again, to 53.3 in June from 54 in May.

The Iran war is another deadweight on domestic manufacturing. That’s partially the consequence of blockages of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial thoroughfare not only for middle eastern oil, but also for such industrial inputs as fertilizer and aluminum. Cement, concrete, olive oil and spices are also among commodities produced in the region that use the strait as an outlet to reach the outside world.

Uncertainties in the region, tensions between the U.S. and China, and heightened concerns over the safety of shipping overall have driven up shipping costs between the far east and the U.S. The price of shipping a benchmark 40-foot container from China to the West Coast has nearly quadrupled to $6,687 now from about $1,700 just before the Iran war began, according to an index maintained by the cargo firm Freightos — even though shipping prices typically decline during this time of year.

There can be little doubt that the U.S. would benefit from an industrial policy — if it’s coherent. China supplanted America as the world’s leading exporter of manufactured goods in 2010, and the gap has only widened since then. China’s dominance may be hard to reverse, as it’s built on lower labor costs and transport infrastructure that enjoys focused government investment.

Tariffs could be a component of a new industrial policy, but Trump’s tariffs aren’t rationally geared to protecting domestic industries that need protection. They’re expressions of his whims, and as such they’re totally ineffective. If there are government investment policies targeting industries that need assistance, they’re not apparent to economists or industrialists.

Trump can talk as much as he likes about a golden age for U.S. manufacturing, but from his first term through this one, it’s nothing but talk. And talk, of course, is cheap.

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Data centers’ energy demand threatens Trump’s “Made in America” plan

PJM has also forecast that electricity demand in its territory will surpass available supply by 6.6 gigawatts starting in 2027, which the Wall Street Journal describes as equivalent to more than six nuclear power plants.

No easy fixes

Some US manufacturers have raised the prices paid by customers to partially offset their own rising electricity bills, or are even considering relocation of their businesses, Reuters reported. The Wall Street Journal highlighted warnings from steel industry executives that production outages could become more likely if local power grids are overwhelmed by demand. Such results would likely undercut the competitiveness and viability of US manufacturing, which the Trump administration claims to have prioritized despite the loss of 83,000 manufacturing jobs in Trump’s first year back in office.

The White House has touted getting Big Tech companies to pay for new power generation and transmission infrastructure by signing a Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which happens to lack any meaningful enforcement mechanism. The Trump administration also joined state governors in pushing PJM to hold a one-time backstop auction for purchasing new power supply capacity.

But the United States still faces huge challenges in building enough new power generation and transmission lines to support the energy needs of AI data center demand and US manufacturers, not to mention other businesses and residential customers. The Trump administration’s efforts to stop renewable energy projects involving wind and solar power have also not helped.

In 2025 alone, the United States saw the cancellation of power projects totaling 266 gigawatts of generation capacity—equivalent to 25 percent of America’s current electricity generation capacity and more than the total electricity generation of Texas, according to Michael Thomas, CEO of the Cleanview data platform that tracks renewable energy and data center projects. Clean energy projects accounted for 93 percent of those project cancellations.

The Trump administration’s cancellations of various wind power projects certainly represented one contributing factor. But other significant patterns included local opposition to renewable energy projects in states such as Ohio and Indiana that were also courting new data center development, along with a lack of new transmission lines leading to high interconnection costs for new clean energy projects, Thomas said. If US states and the federal government are hoping to support local manufacturing, they may need to start making different choices in addressing the rising energy costs of the data center boom.

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APAA celebrates one year of President Trump’s 50 per cent Section 232 aluminium tariff and historic investments in US manufacturing

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APAA Celebrates One Year of President Trump’s 50% Section 232 Aluminum Tariff and Historic Investments in U.S. Manufacturing

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   APAA Celebrates One Year of President Trump’s 50% Section 232 Aluminum Tariff and Historic Investments in U.S. Manufacturing

APAA Celebrates One Year of President Trump’s 50% Section 232 Aluminum Tariff and Historic Investments in U.S. Manufacturing

APAA Celebrates One Year of President Trump’s 50% Section 232 Aluminum Tariff and Historic Investments in U.S. Manufacturing

PR Newswire

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2026

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the American Primary Aluminum Association celebrates the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s 50% Section 232 aluminum tariff. This tariff is revolutionizing domestic manufacturing production, strengthening supply chains, creating thousands of new jobs, generating billions of dollars in US investment, and fortifying our national security. President Trump strengthened the Section 232 aluminum tariff to combat unfair trade practices and persistent cheating by foreign governments, delivering unprecedented wins for American workers in the aluminum industry:

• Emirates Global Aluminum and Century Aluminum plan to build the first new US smelter in nearly 50 years, a more than $4 billion investment that will more than double U.S. production capacity and create over 5,000 jobs in Oklahoma.
• Century Aluminum restored their Mt. Holly smelter to full production capacity, creating over 100 U.S. aluminum jobs in South Carolina and increasing U.S. aluminum production by over 10%.
• Novelis is investing $5 billion into a new aluminum rolling mill, creating up to 1,000 jobs in Alabama.
• Aluminum Dynamics officially launched commercial production at a new, state-of-the-art recycled aluminum flat rolled mill in Mississippi, a $2.5 billion investment that has created over 700 jobs.

“One year ago today, President Trump took decisive action to stand up for American workers by launching a new Golden Age for domestic aluminum manufacturing,” remarked APAA President Mark Duffy. “The results speak for themselves: the aluminum industry is delivering billions of dollars in U.S. investment and creating thousands of American aluminum jobs, and it’s all due to President Trump’s 50% Section 232 tariff, with no exemptions or exclusions.”

About the American Primary Aluminum Association:

The American Primary Aluminum Association advances the interests of America’s primary aluminum industry and its workers through the Aluminum Now campaign. APAA is registered and incorporated in Washington, DC and operates as a non-profit trade association. For more, please visit: www.aluminumnow.org.

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SOURCE American Primary Aluminum Association

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Trump’s crackdown on China-linked solar firms stalls U.S. factory boom

Top solar companies, banks and insurers have stopped doing business with at least a half dozen recently built U.S. panel factories because of ⁠uncertainty over whether their ties to China could disqualify them from clean-energy subsidies, according to industry executives and documents.

The shift, driven by new policies of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, jeopardizes more than a third of U.S. solar capacity in factories initially built by Chinese firms. Details of how the policy uncertainty is driving installers and insurers away from U.S. solar factories with China ties have not been previously reported.

The emerging effects dovetail with Trump’s broader efforts to block Chinese companies from the U.S. market and to slash government support for green energy. However, the policy could backfire by imperiling growth in U.S. manufacturing jobs and power generation at a time of rising utility bills and soaring electricity demand from data centers serving the artificial intelligence industry, industry experts say.

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These U.S. companies think Trump’s tariffs are great. Here’s why

It’s hard to imagine that any CEO in the United States likes the tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump more than Marc Bitzer does.

Bitzer is the chief executive of Whirlpool Corp., the only major appliance company that makes the bulk of its products in the U.S.

At one of the company’s factories — a giant plant in Clyde, Ohio, that has the capacity to produce 22,000 washing machines per day — Bitzer announced Whirlpool’s plans for a new $60-million US facility in nearby Perrysburg, which would create 150 jobs.

He told the audience that Whirlpool used to feel it did not have a fair chance against its chiefly Asia-based competitors because of their ability to manufacture using cheap, subsidized steel and other components.

“It felt occasionally, being the last U.S.-based appliance manufacturer, like being in a boxing fight with three other guys in the ring, and you have one arm tied behind your back,” he said.

Then along came the Trump administration and its sweeping global tariff regime, which Bitzer says has given the country an opportunity to start a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. It’s a sentiment you rarely hear from the many Americans struggling with rising costs triggered in part by Trump’s trade policies.

Marc Bitzer is the chief executive of Whirlpool Corp., the only major home appliance company that manufacturers the bulk of its products in the U.S. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

“Tariffs do create a level playing field, and that’s a big deal,” Bitzer said, a line that triggered applause from the audience, a mix of plant workers and elected officials.

The White House is on a push to showcase the success stories of U.S. manufacturers who are benefitting from tariffs. The push saw U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, a member of Trump’s cabinet, setting out last week on a two-day tour of factories in Ohio and Michigan, including the Whirlpool plant.

‘Tariffs on all that crap from China’

CBC News followed Greer on his itinerary, which also included stops at a company near Detroit that builds drones and at the biggest U.S. manufacturer of solar energy systems, near Toledo, Ohio.

“Under other presidents, the job of the U.S. trade representative was usually to do trade deals to try to import as much crap as possible from China,” Greer told the audience at Whirlpool.

“Under President Trump, the job is to put tariffs on all that crap from China,” he said.

Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative in the Trump administration, attends an event in Warren, Mich., on Thursday as part of a push by the White House to showcase success stories of U.S. manufacturers who are benefitting from tariffs. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

After Whirlpool’s CEO praised the Trump administration for its tariff policies, Greer praised the company for its long-standing commitment to making its washing machines, dryers, refrigerators and more in the U.S.

It revealed something of a common theme to Greer’s tour: the companies he visited were already doing “Made in America” manufacturing before Trump returned to the White House in 2025 and launched his tariff-powered global trade war.

Ultimate goal is more U.S. manufacturing

At each stop on the tour, Greer laid out his pitch for the administration’s tariff regime. And in contrast to Trump, who has imposed or threatened tariffs for at times wildly divergent reasons, Greer puts forward a consistent rationale.

“The ultimate goal is we want to make sure that we have more manufacturing in the United States,” Greer told reporters at one of the Michigan stops, the plant where automaker Stellantis assembles the Jeep Wagoneer.

“The more you make here, the more the tariffs benefit you,” he said later that day at the Auburn Hills, Mich., location of Firefly Drone Systems and Swarm Defense Technologies.

An employee of Firefly Drone Systems works at the company’s factory in Auburn Hills, Mich. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

Like Whirlpool, the two drone companies were making their products in the U.S. before Trump’s tariffs were imposed.

“It’s been very important to us from the beginning that we manufacture close to home,” Kyle Dorosz, CEO of Swarm and Firefly, said in an interview.

Companies want ‘level playing field’

So while tariffs did not drive the companies’ initial moves to make their products in the U.S., Trump’s trade war means the decision is paying off.

“It’s actually created a competitive advantage for us compared to some of our other competitors, especially on the commercial side, who were manufacturing overseas and their entire system was now subject to tariffs,” Dorosz said.

There’s a similar take on tariffs at First Solar, which manufactures large-scale solar power systems at U.S. factories like the one Greer visited near Toledo.

With its rivals either based in China or using largely Chinese-made components, First Solar committed seven years ago to sourcing its materials domestically and making its products in U.S. factories, says CEO Mark Widmar.

Greer, left, speaks with Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar, the largest solar power manufacturer that makes its products in the U.S. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

“China has chosen to compete in a way that it would almost make it unmanageable for any company, regardless of your industry,” Widmar told reporters as he stood beside Greer after their factory tour.

“I don’t need to be protected. I just need a level playing field,” he said. “Give me a level playing field, we’ll out-innovate and we’ll thrive.”

Manufacturing jobs declined since Trump inauguration

While Greer’s tour highlighted companies that have been making their products in the U.S. for years, it’s more difficult for the administration to showcase manufacturers that have set up shop in the U.S. or added jobs specifically as a result of the tariffs.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, U.S. manufacturing job numbers have continued to decline. According to Federal Reserve Bank statistics, there were 12,673,000 manufacturing jobs at Trump’s inauguration in January of last year, a figure that has since dipped to 12,591,000.

One win for the tariff regime that Greer pointed to: the announcement in October by Stellantis that it would shift production of the Jeep Compass from Brampton, Ont., to a previously shuttered plant in Belvidere, Ill.

Greer says the administration isn’t singling out Canada with its tariff policy, but has made a strategic decision to bring as much auto manufacturing to the U.S. as possible.

Dozens of Whirlpool employees at the washing machine plant in Clyde, Ohio, were in the audience for the company’s announcement of investing $60 million US to build a new manufacturing plant producing appliance components in nearby Perrysburg. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

“It’s not really about Canada per se. Our action on autos is global in nature,” Greer told CBC News.

Asked if the administration sees Canada as a partner or competitor, Greer refused to bite.

“I don’t think it’s really binary, right? There are some things we import from Canada that we need,” he said.

It’s a statement that contrasts notably with Trump’s oft-repeated yet factually incorrect line that the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada.

Greer will be a key negotiator in the upcoming talks on the future of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the trade deal that currently exempts the vast bulk of Canada’s export from tariffs.

Each country has until July 1 to announce whether it intends to renew the agreement, and Greer told CBC News in February that tariffs will be a part of any Trump administration trade deal with Canada.

Back at the Whirlpool plant, he told the audience that he’s in the Oval Office on a near-daily basis.

“Almost every day, President Trump says, ‘Do you think the tariffs should be higher, Jamieson?'” Greer said. His response: “We’re working on it, sir. We’re working on it.”

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Trump’s promised ‘manufacturing boom’ couldn’t save these Whirlpool jobs

New York
 — 

The US has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last year. Beverly Dawson’s family was among them.

Dawson was laid off this month at Whirlpool’s refrigerator factory in Amana, a small town in eastern Iowa. Her son’s offer to work full-time at the plant when he graduates from college in a few semesters was also pulled. Her husband was the only one to survive the latest round of layoffs.

At the Amana plant, the hope of a stable future building appliances in the town that introduced America’s first side-by-side refrigerator is dimming. The factory’s workforce has been cut by more than half over the last few years as Whirlpool expands production in Mexico.

“You have generations working at the Amana plant. People’s parents and grandparents,” Dawson, 48, said. “It’s a central part of the community and was a good, solid place to work.”

Dawson is one of more than 100,000 American manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs since President Donald Trump entered office last year. Trump as a candidate promised a “manufacturing boom” and once in office launched broad global tariffs as the way to revitalize factory production in the United States.

Despite the administration’s push, the decades-long decline in manufacturing has marched on. The US economy has shed more than 7.5 million manufacturing jobs since a peak in 1979, driven by global competition, automation and exchange rates.

Whirlpool has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Mexico to manufacture refrigerators at two factories in recent years, said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace (IAM), which represents workers at the Amana plant.

IAM opposes Trump’s broad tariffs, fearing they would disrupt US production and cause layoffs.

“Whirlpool advertised quite often that they’re the only American manufacturer of refrigerators and tariffs will only be beneficial,” Dawson said. “I don’t understand how that reconciles with opening up more in Mexico.”

Whirlpool, which also owns the KitchenAid, Maytag and Amana brands, supports Trump’s tariffs.

The Michigan-based company has said the import taxes give it an advantage. That’s because most of the appliances it sells in the United States are produced domestically at 10 US plants, in contrast to its rivals in Asia like LG and Samsung.

The administration’s “trade policies are critical to closing trade loopholes and leveling the playing field for Whirlpool and other US manufacturers,” Whirlpool spokesperson Chad Parks said in a statement to CNN.

Whirlpool said it’s making “difficult but necessary changes” to the plant in Amana “all with the goal of keeping Amana competitive and a viable manufacturing presence in the community for the long term.”

Whirlpool said it’s committed to American manufacturing, pointing to a recent $300 million investment in Ohio to build washing machines.

But the pull to produce in lower-cost countries like China and Mexico remains strong for all US manufacturers. The power of tariffs has not been enough to make US manufacturing competitive with these countries. Trump’s snap decisions on tariff rates have also chilled companies’ long-term investment and hiring plans. (The White House did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)