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Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris both claim they helped revive American manufacturing while alleging each other has hurt it, using cherry-picked data points to support their claims.
Trump and Biden administrations both boast different manufacturing records. Let us sort through some of their claims on manufacturing performance so you can form your own opinion about each administration’s manufacturing efforts.
Donald Trump offered up this view during a rally last month:
Together we will reclaim America’s destiny as the No.1 manufacturing superpower in the world, something no other nation had achieved for over half a century prior to my administration. While many thought we couldn’t bring back manufacturing jobs under my watch alone – one year before taking office alone saw over 10,000 lost. Yet under my leadership we created over half a million manufacturing jobs within three years! Yet under Kamala Harris we’ve fallen back into manufacturing recession, losing 13,000 manufacturing jobs just this year alone!
Here is Harris’ version, from an event held just days after President Joe Biden withdrew from running for president:
Harris (July 18): Donald Trump claims he brought back American manufacturing; in reality, under him we lost thousands of manufacturing jobs… But under President Joe Biden and myself we created nearly 800k new manufacturing jobs — leading many experts to call our efforts “manufacturing boom”.
Other Democrats have also responded.
On the first night of the Democratic convention, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told her audience, “Donald Trump talked big about creating manufacturing jobs; but you know who actually did it: President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently made a stunning assertion regarding Trump’s presidency on Fox News during an interview: “Even before the pandemic hit America went into a manufacturing recession.
Both sides were measuring U.S. manufacturing through job growth metrics. There are other measurements, including productivity, real output and wages relative to nonmanufacturing jobs; but since both sides focused on jobs as the measure for U.S. manufacturing activity, let’s use data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as our starting point.
Manufacturing Jobs Under Trump
Trump entered office in January 2017 amidst what Forbes termed an industrial “mini-recession in 2015 through much of 2016,” leading him to point out a loss of manufacturing jobs before his takeover – specifically between December 2015 and December 2016, there was a decrease of approximately 7,000 manufacturing jobs (he rounded this number up to 10,000 for his rhetoric).
Donald Trump failed to mention that manufacturing employment had steadily been increasing over nearly six years prior to levelling off in 2016 — adding over 900,000 new manufacturing jobs post-Great Recession despite efforts made since 2009. Additionally, any manufacturing positions lost during that recession still haven’t been returned fully recouped.
Trump’s first two years were marked by an economic expansion that added 462,000 manufacturing jobs; this figure levels off by 2019, which witnessed the full-year loss of 43,000 manufacturing jobs due to pandemic-fueled recession; this loss is what Buttigieg was alluding to when he stated “America went into a manufacturing recession even prior to pandemic-fuelled recession”.
Pandemic effects resulted in massive job loss, particularly within manufacturing between January and April of 2020, where approximately 1.4 million manufacturing jobs had disappeared between January and April. While approximately 770,000 had returned before Trump left office, overall manufacturing jobs had decreased overall by 188,000 overall during his presidency.
Manufacturing Jobs Under Biden.
As soon as Biden took office, manufacturing jobs continued their post-pandemic recovery bump. His first two years saw 754,000 manufacturing job gains while by mid-2022 there were more people employed in this sector than prior to the pandemic according to BLS data.
As of July 2020 – the latest month with available data – Biden had added 765,000 manufacturing jobs under him; that represents 173,000 more manufacturing employment since pre-pandemic levels reached their pre-pandemic high point of February 20. (These numbers may change drastically; preliminary estimates for annual revisions suggest BLS monthly estimates overshot manufacturing job creation estimates by 115,000; rather than showing 19,000 manufacturing job additions that year under BLS estimates, revisions indicate 96,000 job reductions)
However, similar to what happened under Trump, manufacturing employment growth stalled during Biden’s third year as president. Between January 2023 and July 2024 – which are the latest available data – just 11,000 manufacturing jobs have been gained; by contrast Trump claimed there had been an annual loss of 13,000 manufacturing jobs from January through July of this year (although final revised numbers from BLS may reveal even greater disparity).
Under both Presidents Trump and Biden, trends were similar: two years of growth after an economic downturn followed by job loss in year three.
Comparing raw numbers, Biden has witnessed an average monthly gain in manufacturing employment of 18,200 under Obama compared to 11600 per month under Trump prior to the pandemic (and any revisions would likely lower his average gain but remain higher). (Both figures could still be revised further downward as Biden would still outshone Trump).
Other Measures of Manufacturing
Of course there are other methods available for measuring the health of manufacturing in America.
“Talking about manufacturing can be complex given how inconsistent trends have been between employment and output,” according to George Washington University economic professor Tara Sinclair, citing data from Pew Research Center’s long-term trend showing manufacturing output increased as jobs diminished over the long-term.
Sinclair explained in an email: “Industrial production is my preferred measure for measuring output.” Since September 2018 however, industrial production began declining again after peaking at that time – there had been gains between 2016-2018, but these were due to recovering from manufacturing recession of 2015-2016.
Under Biden, industrial production rose until fall 2022 before remaining fairly stagnant since. According to Federal Reserve data,
Robert Atkinson, president of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation told us via email that under both presidents the trade deficit for manufactured goods has generally increased and that manufacturing labor productivity growth “has been dismal”.
Ian Clay of ITIF noted in a February 23, 2023, report that while U.S. manufacturing jobs had grown 830,000 during Biden’s two years as President, productivity (measured as real output per hour of labor) in manufacturing is lower today compared to two years prior.
Atkinson noteds the disparate impact manufacturing job creation has had on overall employment levels. According to BLS data, manufacturing job growth (6.28% under Biden and 4.45% during Trump’s first three pre-COVID 19 years) lagged behind overall job creation (11.06% and 4.45% respectively). Atkinson points out this disproportionality is evident both under Biden (6.28% of total job creation vs manufacturing growth = 6.28%) and Trump (44% overall growth of manufacturing employment growth in his three pre-COVID 19 years despite both administration’s best intentions in creating manufacturing job growth at much slower rates than overall job creation (4.44% overall vs 5.751% overall job creation).
“Neither administration was particularly successful at improving this area,” Atkinson noted, while noting how manufacturing wages have steadily been falling relative to non-manufacturing jobs.
A 2022 Federal Reserve paper which investigated differences in wages between manufacturing and other sectors concluded that “the manufacturing wage premium–extra pay earned by workers in manufacturing over those working elsewhere–had all but vanished over recent years”.
Atkinson noted, neither party should claim credit for manufacturing activities.
Alan Tonelson, an analyst of U.S. manufacturing policy who blogs at RealityChek, shared with us how various measures of manufacturing health present different images.
“Both administrations have taken significant steps toward creating the necessary policy infrastructure to facilitate an expanded U.S. manufacturing comeback,” Tonelson noted, though each employed different strategies: Trump by way of tariffs and deregulation while Biden relied more on government incentives for growth.
Biden has made significant investments in factory building. His Inflation Reduction Act included billions for clean energy development while the CHIPS Act provided $39 billion for manufacturing facilities within the U.S. as well as $11 billion towards semiconductor research and development.
Bureau of Economic Analysis data indicate private investment in manufacturing has skyrocketed under Biden, increasing approximately 90% since the fourth quarter of 2022; yet these investments may take years before their effect can be felt in job numbers for manufacturing firms.
Tonelson acknowledged there would be some time between factory construction, the purchase and installation of equipment necessary, and hiring workers.
“Ultimately,” he noted, “we will need to see what level of demand there actually is for these products.” For instance, electric vehicle sales may not have reached expectations as expected and whether semiconductor production in America can compete with Taiwan remains uncertain.
Tonelson stated, citing the ongoing effects of pandemic illness: it’s difficult to accurately evaluate manufacturing’s health right now.
“We may need to wait quite some time,” Tonelson noted, before experiencing the full impacts of policies like Trump’s tariffs, investments made under former Vice President Biden and pandemic influenza.
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