About one week ago, I wrote about Trump’s foolish protectionism causing a sluggish job market.

Two months ago, I shared some data showing that his policies were hurting blue-collar workers.

Today, let’s specifically look at manufacturing employment. We’ll start with this chart showing that jobs in that sector have declined ever since Trump started his trade war on “Liberation Day.”

The charts comes from a column for Bloomberg, authored Scott Lincicome.

Here are some passages.

US manufacturing ended 2025 with a thud, capping a rough year for the sector. To recap, manufacturers shed 63,000 jobs, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It wasn’t just labor that was hurting. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index clocked in at 47.9 for December, marking the 10th consecutive month of contraction as new orders were especially weak and costs at historically elevated levels. …the evidence reveals a sector that’s stagnant at best, and a long way from the manufacturing renaissance President Donald Trump promised when he took office for a second time a year ago. …The most basic problem is that modern American manufacturing depends on international trade. As documented by the National Association of Manufacturers, 91% of manufacturers use imports to make things in America, and these inputs constitute around half of all US goods imported each year. Advanced industries such as semiconductors, aerospace and medical devices are particularly reliant on complex global supply chains and cutting-edge components from around the world. …Trump’s broad and indiscriminate tariffs confound domestic manufacturing operations in myriad ways. Most obviously, they increase production costs – even when firms buy American. Tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper drove prices in the US for these critical materials to significant premiums over global benchmarks. Tariffs on parts and equipment raise the same issues.

That’s a damning indictment.

But there’s more.

The second problem stems not from the level of tariff rates, but how they’ve been implemented. …Last year, the US tariff code was amended 50 times, a non-pandemic record and far above the pre-Trump standard. These changes, along with constant tariff threats, caused an unprecedented increase in trade policy uncertainty, which weighed on manufacturers’ hiring, capital expenditures, supply chain and sales plans… Complexity has imposed additional costs. By the end of last year, 20 different tariff measures applied to significant volumes of US imports, up from just three in 2017. …tariff complexity has pushed US firms to scuttle major operational decisions until they have more clarity.

Regarding his point about tariff complexity, he shared this very depressing flowchart last month.

This is perhaps not as bad as tax code complexity, but it’s a disaster nonetheless.

Needless costs being imposed on American employers, with workers ultimately bearing a big chunk of the burden.

Let’s return to the topic of manufacturing employment. Writing for the Washington Post, David Lynch shares some unfortunate data. Here are some excerpts.

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 Trump declared “Liberation Day” in April… U.S. factories employ 12.7 million people today, 72,000 fewer than when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement. …That’s because roughly half of U.S. imports are “intermediate” goods that American companies use to make finished products… So while tariffs have protected American manufacturers such as 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. …Small and midsize businesses have found Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs especially vexing. …Industries producing more technologically complex goods such as aircraft and semiconductors also are paying an outsize price… Makers of semiconductors, for example, shed more than 13,000 jobs since April.

Lynch’s article included this chart. It’s about manufacturing activity rather than jobs, but the two are correlated.

As you can see, it does not appear that Trump’s protectionism is having a good impact.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal last month also observes that Trump’s protectionism has backfired for blue-collar workers.

…private employers aren’t laying off workers in large numbers but they also aren’t hiring all that many. The question is why? …Our main suspect is the impact of tariffs and the uncertainty Mr. Trump’s willy-nilly border tax policies have caused. …One big statistical reason to suspect that tariffs are hurting jobs is the trend in manufacturing. Remember when tariffs were supposed to produce a U.S. manufacturing boom? It hasn’t happened. In January BLS reported 12,755,000 workers in all manufacturing industries. The number rose by a few thousand through April, but then began to fall each month and in November hit 12,697,000. That’s a net loss of 58,000 jobs, including 19,000 in the last three months. Further evidence comes from the industries affected most by Mr. Trump’s tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminum and 25% on autos and auto parts. Employment in motor vehicles and parts fell 15,000 since January, while it remained flat in steel-making and aluminum manufacturing. This doesn’t count the job losses in downstream manufacturing firms that use steel and aluminum. Some renaissance.

Last but not least, let’s look at some research published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Ye Zhang estimated how much it would cost the economy to artificially boost manufacturing jobs.

…this report…roughly estimates the hypothetical tariff rate needed to eliminate the US trade deficit in manufactured goods, the number of jobs that would thereby shift from other sectors to manufacturing activity, and the economic cost of this endeavor. …Replacement production of $641 billion manufactured imports would entail about $321 billion of new manufacturing value added… In turn, the additional manufacturing value added of $321 billion entails roughly 1.42 million jobs. Each job created entails an annual cost of $225,000 for an indefinite period… The cost is paid through higher prices of manufactures purchased by US households and business firms. …However, this calculation critically depends on the assumed 0.5 pass-through coefficient. If the coefficient is actually close to 1.0, as estimated by independent scholars, the total cost would be $642 billion annually, and the cost per job-year would be $550,000.

For what it’s worth, I think $550,000 per job is more accurate than $225,000.

But set that aside. The key takeaway from this research is protectionism is a net job destroyer. The resources diverted to create manufacturing jobs are no longer available to create jobs elsewhere in the economy.

The bottom line is that there’s a tried-and-true recipe for job creation. Sadly, Trump seems incapable of following those directions.

P.S. While economists generally are lousy forecasters, I was correct last February when warning that Trump’s protectionism would be bad for manufacturing.

P.P.S. Because of productivity increases, manufacturing employment has been on a downward trajectory for decades, so some job losses may have occurred even if Trump had good trade policy.

P.P.P.S. Because of changing market conditions, there will always be some job losses. The goal of policy makers should be to make sure that there are pro-growth policies so that there is net job creation.