Among the principal passions of American protectionists these days is the quest to ‘bring back’ manufacturing employment to the U.S. This quest is economic folly no less than would be the folly of those persons who yearned to ‘bring back’ agricultural employment to the U.S. As with the latter case, we must hope that in the former case the protectionists fail.
Nevertheless, this whackadoodle passion to bring back manufacturing employment drives much of Trump’s protectionism, as well as fuels much public support for these high tariffs.
So how are these tariffs working out on this front? Not well.
This first graph is of the absolute number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. from September 2024 through September 2025.
This second graph is the first graph divided by total nonfarm employment over the same time period, showing manufacturing employment as a share of total nonfarm employment:
Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports are reversing neither the absolute decline in manufacturing employment (indeed, quite the opposite!) nor the 71-year-long trend of manufacturing employment’s falling share of total nonfarm employment.
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I thank GMU Econ alum Mark Perry for inspiring this post.
