According to President-elect Donald Trump, his threatened tariffs—10% on all goods, 60% on China exports, 25% each on Canada and Mexico exports, 100% on BRICS nations that don’t show obeisance to the U.S. dollar—will cause companies now producing abroad to return to, or move to America, and will cause an American manufacturing renaissance.
Trump’s first-term tariffs on China, Canada and Europe were all continued or increased by the Biden Administration, and so were in force for most of two administrations, and had no such effect. From the end of 2016, at the time of Trump’s first inauguration, to the end of 2024, manufacturing employment in the United States has grown by about 335,000—from 12,553,000 to 12,888,000—or just 3,500 manufacturing jobs/month, on average, during those years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unadjusted figures. That 330,000 is only 4% of the growth—about 8 million—in the American labor force during those years.
What little manufacturing and construction growth did occur was significantly the result of direct and large government subsidies—to vaccine and medical equipment manufacture, electric vehicle manufacture, solar farm and wind farm production, building of semiconductor factories, data centers, etc. (Agricultural production in America did not increase.)
Companies which might move to the United States from other nations in such a tariff environment as the President-elect describes, will then confront tariffs on the elements of their production which they import. Confronted by such tariffs as these, they are more likely to shift their exports to other countries (and/or make other countries bases for their exports to America), as Chinese capital goods producers did in electronics, autos, energy technologies, etc.; and as Russia and India did when blocked from petrochemical trade with the United States and Europe by sanctions.
Within the United States, “front-loading” of imports against potential Trump tariffs has been occurring since early November according to a Nov. 15 Barron’s report, increasing U.S. business inventories and building in a slowdown in investment by the end of 2025. This has always happened when broad tariffs were announced in U.S. history. Moreover, part of the American semiconductor industry, such as it is, is in countries like Malaysia, a BRICS “partner country,” and would be blocked by a 100% tariff.
No “American manufacturing renaissance” can be caused by any policy which does not involve escalating capital goods exports and credit for new infrastructure projects—the strategy laid out in the new Schiller Institute pamphlet, “Development Drive Means Billions of New Jobs, No Refugees, No War.” The proposed tariffs are hopefully negotiating threats and not more.
