Category: Business

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 manufacturing have 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.

Small- and midsize businesses have found Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs especially vexing. Fifty-seven percent of midsize manufacturers and 40 percent of small producers said they had no certainty about their input costs in a November survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Only 23 percent of large manufacturers shared that complaint.

Smaller companies also were more than twice as likely to respond to tariffs by delaying investments in new plants and equipment, the survey found. One reason could be that taxes on imports raise the price of goods used in production much more than they do with typical consumer items, according to a study by the San Francisco Fed.

Industries producing more technologically complex goods such as aircraft and semiconductors also are paying an outsize price, according to Gary Winslett, director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. Makers of semiconductors, for example, shed more than 13,000 jobs since April.

“They’re the ones who need the imported inputs. Really advanced manufacturing is actually what’s getting hit the hardest,” he said.

Trump’s tariffs, however, are not the industrial sector’s only headache. Factory payrolls began their post-pandemic decline in early 2023, almost two years before Trump returned to the White House.

High interest rates and a shift in consumer spending patterns are hurting the nation’s manufacturers, economists said. Business loans are more than twice as expensive as they were four years ago, with banks charging their most creditworthy borrowers interest rates of 6.75 percent. That discourages businesses from expanding operations and hiring additional workers.

After bingeing during the height of the pandemic on durable goods, consumers have gradually redirected their spending to in-person services. Money that once went to makers of furniture, televisions and exercise machines now goes instead to restaurants and entertainment venues.

In Indiana, the spending switch can be glimpsed in the fortunes of the recreational vehicle industry, a local mainstay. RV shipments soared to a record 600,400 in 2021 as consumers trapped at home by the pandemic hit the road. But by 2024, the work-from-home era was over, and sales fell by nearly half. Thor Industries, the largest RV manufacturer, laid off several hundred workers last year, as demand flagged.

Once Trump returned to the White House, manufacturers responded by over-ordering imports to beat the anticipated tariffs. That’s left many producers with more inventory than they need, suggesting cuts lie ahead, according to Hicks.

“The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand,” he said.

Modest numbers of manufacturing jobs have been trimmed throughout the economy. In December, Westlake Corp., a Houston-based producer of industrial chemicals, said it would idle four production lines at facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi, putting 295 employees out of work. Speaking on an investor call, company executives blamed excess global capacity and weak demand for the move.

While the jobs that Trump promised have not materialized, factory output rose in 2025, reaching its highest mark in almost three years, according to Federal Reserve data, and administration officials said it is only a matter of time before the full benefits of the president’s plan are felt.

Trump’s tariffs and jawboning encourage CEOs to invest in new U.S. plants. Provisions in the president’s signature fiscal legislation permitting companies to quickly write off the full expense of new investments in equipment and research and development expenses will spur modern manufacturing, they said.

“It also encourages the build-out of high-precision manufacturing here at home, which will lead to high-paying construction and factory jobs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech this month.

Companies are spending more than three times as much on constructing new factories as they did when Trump was first inaugurated, though less than during the Biden-era peak. The White House last fall hailed recent investment announcements by companies such as Stellantis and Whirlpool. Last month, T. RAD North America, a subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, announced plans for a new auto parts plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, which would employ 928 workers.

Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which backs Trump’s manufacturing policies, said the roughly 1 percent shrinkage in factory employment last year was less significant than the uptick in business investment.

“We saw a significant increase in capital expenditures, which is the earliest signal that reindustrialization is taking hold. Those investments take time to permit, build and staff before they show up in employment data,” he said.

The president’s hopes of increasing manufacturing employment defy decades of experience in the United States and other advanced economies. American factory jobs peaked at 19.5 million in the summer of 1979 and have been sliding ever since, largely because of the introduction of machinery that can do the job of several workers.

As two presidents sought to revive domestic production over the past decade, manufacturing employment rode a roller coaster. Factory jobs increased by 421,000 during Trump’s first term before sinking by more than 1 million during the pandemic. President Joe Biden used government subsidies to encourage hiring, especially for green energy projects, and manufacturing payrolls rose more than 100,000 above Trump’s highest mark.

But those gains evaporated by the end of 2024.

On Tuesday, the president addressed the Detroit Economic Club, touting “the strongest and fastest economic turnaround in our country’s history.” He boasted about growth, productivity, investment, incomes, inflation and the stock market.

“The Trump economic boom is officially begun,” the president said.

All that’s missing now are the jobs.

GRAPHIC

Raquel Pacheco began recording on her phone Monday as she opened her front door to the pair of police officers standing outside.

They told her they had questions about a Facebook comment she had written.

“Is that your account?” one officer asked. The other held out his phone, showing a message Pacheco had written days earlier about the mayor of Miami Beach, where she lives.

Pacheco had left the comment about a post from Mayor Steven Meiner, calling his city a “safe haven for everyone.” Meiner, who is Jewish, contrasted Miami Beach with “places like New York City,” where he accused officials of discriminating against Jews and “promoting boycotts” of Jewish and Israeli-owned businesses.

In a series of replies, Pacheco called him racist and criticized his actions toward a number of communities, including Palestinians and LGBTQ people. She said she felt his words of welcome were superficial.

At her door, the officers told Pacheco they were looking for the commenter because that person’s words could “probably incite somebody to do something bad,” her video shows. Pacheco refused to answer their questions without an attorney present, and the officers left within minutes.

Heart racing, Pacheco shut her door and texted her recording of the exchange to three friends who practice law. She struggled to comprehend why the officers were sent to question her – a private citizen who once ran for elected office, knew the mayor and other local officials, and had deep faith in American values. Where the officers saw a comment that could incite violence, Pacheco saw an expression of her right to free speech, she said.

“If we can’t hold this line, we are screwed,” Pacheco, 51, told The Washington Post.

The Miami Beach Police Department on Tuesday evening told The Post that detectives had “conducted a brief, consensual encounter” to make sure there was no safety threat to the mayor or the community. They assessed the social media posting, the department said, to be cautious, citing “recent national concerns regarding antisemitism.”

Meiner said in a statement Tuesday evening that the situation was “a police matter,” adding that he was “a strong supporter of the State of Israel” and its “right to defend its citizens.”

“Others might have a different view and that is their right,” Meiner wrote. “In this situation, our police department believed that inflammatory language that is false and without any factual basis was justification for follow-up to assess the level of threat and to protect the safety of all involved.”

The now-public tussle over Pacheco’s Facebook comment, which was first reported by the Miami Herald, is another salvo in a battle between activists across the country and authorities whom they accuse of stifling speech about divisive political topics, all against the backdrop of political violence that has rocked the country. In recent years, people have faced suspensions, firings and other punishments for social media posts about the Israel-Gaza war, the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Pacheco, who has lived in Miami Beach since 2004 and has run for local elected office three times as a Democrat, said she voted for Meiner in 2023. But she started speaking out against the mayor when he began addressing issues such as crime and homelessness by taking a page from “the Trump playbook,” using measures that she saw as laden with cruelty, Pacheco said. Her criticism often took the form of Facebook posts and comments, alongside advocacy work in the community.

Miami Beach voters elected Meiner to his office, which is nonpartisan, a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed. Since then, the city has experienced a deepening rift among residents, including between Meiner and his constituents.

In March, the mayor tried to end the lease of a local cinema after it screened “No Other Land,” a movie made by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers that shows Israelis bulldozing a town in the West Bank. Meiner described the documentary at the time as a “false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people.” He backpedaled his efforts against the theater after a fraught, nine-hour city commission meeting.

Pacheco referenced the incident in the comment that led police to her doorstep.

On Jan. 6, Meiner’s official Facebook account published the post about Miami Beach being a welcoming place. It featured a photo of the mayor with the following text: “Miami Beach is a safe haven for everyone. We will always stand firm against any discrimination.”

Pacheco replied: “‘We will stand firm against any discrimination’ – unless you’re Palestinian, or Muslim or you think those people have a right to live.” She added: “Careful your racism is showing.”

The next day, the mayor’s post was shared on a community Facebook page, where Pacheco again responded.

“The guy who consistently calls for the death of all Palestinians, tried to shut down a theater for showing a movie that hurt his feelings, and REFUSES to stand up for the LGBTQ community in any way (even leaves the room when they vote on related matters) wants you to know that you’re all welcome here,” she wrote, alongside three clown emojis.

It was this comment that police showed her when she opened her door Monday, Pacheco said.

“This is freedom of speech, this is America, right? I’m a veteran,” she told the officers, according to her recording of the two-minute conversation.

“And I agree with you 100 percent,” one officer responded. “We’re just trying to see if it’s you, because if we’re not talking to the right person, we want to go see who the right person is.”

Pacheco, who said she served in Connecticut’s Army National Guard from 1993 to 1999, said the officers told her she was not going to jail and that they were “just here to have a conversation.” Later in the video, an officer tells Pacheco: “I would think to refrain from posting things like that, because that can get something incited.”

After the brief exchange, Pacheco sat in disbelief.

“There were cops at my door because of something I said,” Pacheco told The Post on Tuesday. “It felt like such a foreign, alien feeling.”

In the day since the officers’ visit, she has retained an attorney and made public records requests about the situation. Should it escalate, she said she was “prepared to sue.” While she described herself as progressive, she said she is “conservative when it comes to the Constitution,” a document she had come to revere since moving to the United States from Portugal in the 1980s. She said she strongly sees Monday’s interaction at her home as a violation of the rights guaranteed by it.

“I’m not one to stand down,” Pacheco said. “I don’t do well with bullies.”

And the next time she sees a social media post from her mayor, or other elected officials for that matter, Pacheco said she knows what she will do: open the comment section, type her thoughts and hit send.