Here’s a letter to Newsweek.
Editor:
You rightly express skepticism of the single most common excuse for Trump’s tariffs, namely, that American manufacturing output is on the ropes (“Can Trump’s Tariffs Help Create a ‘Golden Age’ of US Manufacturing?” May 21). But American manufacturing, in fact, is thriving. In the twenty years from the first quarter of 2005 through the fourth quarter of 2024, real manufacturing output for the U.S. as a whole rose by 30 percent.
The St. Louis Fed has quarterly data on real manufacturing output also by state. Even in the rust belt, manufacturing output has increased over these twenty years. The inflation-adjusted aggregate manufacturing output of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin is today (the fourth quarter of 2024) 14 percent higher than it was in the first quarter of 2005.
Manufacturing is doing even better in the south. In the past twenty years, the inflation-adjusted aggregate manufacturing output of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia has risen by 25 percent.
And in the west it’s going gangbusters. In Arizona manufacturing output is up by 114 percent, in California by 78 percent, in Oregon by 70 percent, and in Colorado by 39 percent.
The narrative – peddled today by pols and pundits across the political spectrum – that trade has “hollowed out” American manufacturing is the opposite of the truth.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
