Under Trump, U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat

Ten straight months of contraction—and no slogans can hide the math

By David Shuster

The tragedy of American manufacturing under President Donald Trump is not merely that it is shrinking. It is that U.S. manufacturing is shrinking under a lunatic who never tires of boasting that he alone can make U.S. manufacturing great again. The boast, like so many in the Trump era, has aged horribly.

Under President Joe Biden, manufacturing did something unusual in modern politics. It worked.

Output climbed to record levels. Investment poured into factories, supply chains stabilized following the Covid hurdles, and the dull, unglamorous business of making things regained a measure of dignity. The boost in U.S. manufacturing was achieved not with chest-thumping speeches or tariff tantrums, but with policies designed for the real world—predictability, infrastructure, and a government that did not wake up each morning looking for a trade war to fight.

Then came Trump 2.0 and with it the old MAGA chaos: tariffs waved like magic wands, certainty treated as weakness, and economic policy reduced to a series of impulsive taunts thrown at U.S. allies and rivals alike.

The result has been a manufacturing sector retreat—contracting for ten straight months, a sustained decline that no amount of Trump shrieking and podium pounding can wish away.

As Barron’s reports, The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index fell to 47.9 from November’s 48.2 reading, the lowest of 2025 despite modest improvements in employment

The consistent decline since Trump 2.0 took office is particularly noteworthy when you consider Old man Orange sold us his tariffs in 2025 as medicine. Trump said the tariffs would discipline foreign competitors, resurrect factories, and restore American industrial dominance.

In practice, the Trump tariffs have functioned more like a recurring fever: raising costs for manufacturers, snarling supply chains, and making long-term planning an exercise in guesswork.

When steel, aluminum, and components grow more expensive overnight—and might grow more expensive again tomorrow—investment does not flourish. It hides.

Manufacturing thrives on characteristics that sound boring: stability, clarity, and predictability. In other words, manufacturers need to have confidence that the rules will not change before the next quarterly report. Trump offers none of this. Instead, Trump delivers uncertainty as spectacle, a governing style that treats unpredictability as a strength. The MAGA crowd may roar. But economists wince and U.S. factories quietly scale back.

There is a special irony in watching Trump align himself with American manufacturing workers while presiding over policies that undermine the very industries Trump claims to champion. Protectionism, according to Trump, is a kind of muscular patriotism. In reality, protectionism is a tax. It is paid by producers, passed on to consumers, and absorbed by workers when factory orders diminish and shifts are cut. It is nationalism for people who do not read balance sheets, including the MAGA nutjobs.

Meanwhile, the comparison to the previous administration lingers like an inconvenient footnote Trump desperately keeps trying to erase. Manufacturing did not boom under Biden because he insulted trading partners or slapped tariffs on impulse.

Manufacturing grew to record levels during the Biden administration because companies believed the future would resemble the present closely enough to justify investment. Confidence, not bravado, did the heavy lifting.

These days, Trump claims that America’s economy under Biden was “dead.” And in a suspension of reality and common sense that only Trump could imagine, Trump says we are the hottest economic nation in the world.

When confronted with actual reality and statistics from the administration’s own government agencies, Trump’s defenders insist the manufacturing and industrial pain is temporary. Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent maintain that the ongoing contractions are a necessary sacrifice on the altar of future industrial greatness.

This is the same argument made by every economic quack throughout the industrial age: endure the harm now and trust the miracle will arrive later. Manufacturers, being practical and rationale people, are not buying it.

So what we are left with in the U.S. under Trump is a familiar pattern: loud promises, thin results, and an insistence that basic facts are wrong, rather than the policy.

Manufacturing is not declining because it lacks patriotism. It is declining because it lacks a U.S. President who understands that modern industry is built on cooperation, predictability, and trust—not haphazard tariffs.

If American manufacturing is going to recover, it will not be rescued by slogans or by a deranged President Trump who mistakes chaos for strength. U.S. manufacturing will recover once White House policy is grounded in economic sense rather than applause lines. Until then, Trump’s vision of industrial revival remains a noisy farce, highlighted by bluster, and collapsing under basic arithmetic.

The only thing Trump is growing in U.S. manufacturing, like so much else, is decline.