A year ago today, President Donald Trump stood at a lectern in the Rose Garden, clutching a booklet of trade barriers as thick as a Bible and telling a crowd of people in suits and hard hats that with his planned tariffs, “jobs and factories will come back to our country and you’re already seeing it happening.”
Those jobs and factories have not materialized, at least on the scale that the President and his top advisers promised.
Based on the latest data from the Labor Department, manufacturing payrolls actually declined slightly from last year, with 98,000 fewer jobs year-over-year. There are 29,900 fewer jobs in auto manufacturing and 18,000 fewer jobs in lumber manufacturing – both sectors the president has tried to protect with trade barriers. In addition, new, higher tariffs on steel and aluminum have hindered the construction of factories. Industry hiring rates – often a reflection of confidence in the economic outlook – are now lower than at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The effort is there, the action is there, but is it actually accomplishing the goal that they set out for?” said Nick Iacovella, executive vice president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a pro-tariff group. “I think there’s still a lot of work to do in this regard.”
Trump’s protectionist industrial policy received support from free trade skeptics at both ends of the political spectrum, including Democratic-leaning organized labor groups. But many of those policy advocates have also become frustrated with the administration’s chaotic implementation of new — and frequently changing — duties and trade agreements, which has increased uncertainty and made businesses hesitant to invest.
Voters are also deeply disappointed with the way Trump is handling the economy, according to a CNN poll published Wednesday President kept at career minimum 31 percent Approval ratings on that issue – and the public’s view on the labor market – have deteriorated.
“There is no evidence that the tariffs have had any positive impact on the economy, certainly in the way that the administration was promising a year ago,” said Martha Gimbel, a former Biden administration economist who is now executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale. “Even though, in the long run, there are some sectors that have a positive impact on employment, for most people the impact is going to be in the form of higher prices.”
Tariff supporters say it’s a year too early to completely transform the U.S. manufacturing base, which has been in steady decline since the 1970s amid foreign competition and cheap labor abroad.
“We’re talking about the short term here,” said Oren Cass, founder and head of the conservative economic think tank American Compass. “There is no reason to expect that any long-term benefits of reindustrialization will be achieved in the first year.”
But they also see positive signs that Trump’s policies are slowing, if not reversing, the downward trend. Back-to-back Manufacturing PMI surveys, a monthly check-in on the state of the industry conducted by the Institute for Supply Management, have shown overall growth in the sector. And some manufacturers surveyed expressed optimism for the future, as the dust around tariff policy settles and companies follow through on massive investment pledges.
“Spring has sprung. It’s really like the balm of Gilead,” one machinery manufacturing CEO told the Dallas Fed in its March survey. “After a long period of illness and mourning, healing has taken place and we are moving on to bigger things. Our business growth so far in 2026 is like a sweet fragrance healing our loss and hardship from the past years.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump promised on Liberation Day to give mass factory workers a raise through “reciprocating” tariffs on individual countries, based on trade barriers imposed on American goods by foreign capital. The Supreme Court in February struck down those and other duties imposed by the White House under a 1977 emergency law.
But the duties the President has imposed on individual industries through a separate trade law have proven more sustainable — and have had a bigger impact on domestic manufacturing. These include an extension of the 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum that went into effect in March 2025 — and then doubled last June — as well as a 25 percent duty imposed on imported autos and auto parts last spring.
Iacovella, who was previously a staffer for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said, “The Liberation Day reciprocating tariffs were designed to create leverage with other countries and increase revenues, not to reinvest manufacturing.” “This is not what their goal was, this is not what they had to do.”
Tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum were also integral to initial deals struck by the administration with major trading partners including Japan, South Korea and the European Union, all of which have major domestic auto industries that depend on sales to the US. The deals reduced their auto tariff rates by 15 percent.
But North American car companies has shouted foulPointing out that those deals have made it cheaper to produce cars overseas than in North America, where U.S. auto makers rely heavily on parts and labor from Canada and Mexico and components can move across borders at times higher. A White House waiver program that allows car companies to reduce their tariff costs depending on how much of a car’s content is American-made has only partially eased their concerns.
“The policy landscape remains fragmented and, frankly, difficult to plan for” for automakers. Cox Automotive executive analyst Erin Keating said during a recent sales forecast call. Even after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs — which affected other parts and materials not covered by the president’s auto tariffs — the temporary 10 percent tariffs and country-specific fees “add more uncertainty.”
The debate over auto tariffs highlights the tension between different pillars of Trump’s trade agenda – as the US prepares to strike deals with major trading partners and open up new markets, it potentially weakens a tariff wall aimed at forcing companies to move production to the US and Trump’s tariff threats and the whipsaw nature of dealmaking over the past year have contributed to a sense of uncertainty, causing companies to put off investing until the trade landscape is more settled. Has become reluctant.
Chris Snyder, an executive director at Morgan Stanley who leads the bank’s research on U.S.-based industrial businesses, said the tariffs have prompted more manufacturers to invest in their U.S. operations, but this has largely not translated into more jobs and factories for traditional industries. Instead, manufacturers are attempting to maximize output from their existing facilities.
new machinery orders According to federal data, the balloon was blown up after Liberation Day, and industrial production has expanded. Tariffs and comparatively cheap energy prices boost the case for bringing manufacturing to the coast, Snyder said. But as long as tariff rates remain unstable, new facilities are unlikely to open.
“The biggest reason companies are not recharging today is policy uncertainty,” he said.
Other economic factors are also at play. Despite Trump’s steep tariffs on aluminum, production in the US has slowed amid higher energy prices as the industry competes with AI.
“It shows a lack of planning on Trump’s part. Reinventing businesses is one thing,” said Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha, a Democrat. “I think we would all like to see more businesses come back, but you can’t put a big manufacturing plant together any faster than a spirit can go to an abandoned Joann Fabric store for Halloween.”
“The issue here is that by the time we see the effects of corporate companies coming back, reshoring, many other companies will have gone out of business,” Blaha said.
But there are signs that the industry’s prospects may be improving. ISM’s monthly survey of domestic manufacturers shows that the sector has expanded since the beginning of the year – Including the shock to oil prices after the war in the Middle East. Even though manufacturing payrolls have shrunk and hiring rates are stuck in the mud, the number of available jobs has expanded compared with last year, according to Labor Department data released earlier this week.
There is one industry that has emerged as a clear winner under Trump’s second-term trade policy – steel manufacturing. According to the American Iron and Steel Institute, steel imports are down 12.6 percent in 2025 and jobs are up from last year. The industry has benefited from long-term gains — Trump imposed tariffs on steel from most countries in his first term and former President Joe Biden left many of them in place, although he negotiated reductions with key allies.
Brandon Farris, executive vice president of the Steel Manufacturers Association, called the tariffs a “game changer” for his industry.
“He has reshaped American steel manufacturing, increasing domestic production by 2.5 million tons, cutting imports and investing more than $25 billion, helping create thousands of jobs,” Farris said.
But like most manufacturers, the steel industry still has problems recruiting the workforce. a survey by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute found last April that while 80 percent of Americans think the country would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing, only 25 percent agreed that they would be better off if they worked in a factory.
And many of the same groups that have been bullish on the president’s trade agenda and its benefits for blue-collar workers are growing frustrated by the lack of momentum.
Iacovella pointed to other sector-specific trade investigations that the administration launched last year — but have not yet been completed or used to impose more tariffs. The Commerce Department launched 12 investigations in 2025, but the administration has imposed tariffs on only a handful of sectors: copper, heavy trucks and lumber, in addition to tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos and auto parts.
Shawn Fain, president of the United Autoworkers – who supported aspects of it Trump’s trade agenda – Recently told his members that the President is weakening.
“We expect results,” he said at the group’s annual conference in February. “And after a year of big talks on trade from the president, we’re still having … plant closings impacting our membership. And not just our membership, working-class people everywhere.”
