Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.
Donald Trump has long been convinced that the United States must revitalize its manufacturing sector, having—unwisely, in his view—allowed other countries to sell all manner of foreign-produced manufactured goods in the giant American market. As president, he’s moved quickly to shift the U.S. away from its previous embrace of liberal trade and open markets as cornerstones of its approach to international economic policy —wielding tariffs as his key policy instrument. Since taking office barely two months ago, President Trump has implemented a series of tariff hikes aimed at China and foreign producers of steel and aluminum—important categories of traded manufactured goods—and threatened to impose steep tariffs on most U.S. imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. In addition, he’s pledged to levy separate tariffs on imports of automobiles, semi-conductors, lumber, and pharmaceuticals, among other manufactured goods.
In the third week of March, the White House issued a flurry of news releases touting the administration’s commitment to “position the U.S. as a global superpower in manufacturing” and listing substantial new investments planned by multinational enterprises involved in manufacturing. Some of these appear to contemplate relocating manufacturing production in other jurisdictions to the U.S., while others promise new “greenfield” investments in a variety of manufacturing industries.
President Trump’s intense focus on manufacturing is shared by a large slice of America’s political class, spanning both of the main political parties. Yet American manufacturing has hardly withered away in the last few decades. The value of U.S. manufacturing “output” has continued to climb, reaching almost $3 trillion last year (equal to 10 per cent of total GDP). The U.S. still accounts for 15 per cent of global manufacturing production, measured in value-added terms. In fact, among the 10 largest manufacturing countries, it ranks second in manufacturing value-added on a per-capita basis. True, China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing country, representing about 30 per cent of global output. And the heavy reliance of Western economies on China in some segments of manufacturing does give rise to legitimate national security concerns. But the bulk of international trade in manufactured products does not involve goods or technologies that are particularly critical to national security, even if President Trump claims otherwise. Moreover, in the case of the U.S., a majority of two-way trade in manufacturing still takes place with other advanced Western economies (and Mexico).
In the U.S. political arena, much of the debate over manufacturing centres on jobs. And there’s no doubt that employment in the sector has fallen markedly over time, particularly from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s (see table below). Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.
U.S. Manufacturing Employment, Select Years (000)*
1990
17,395
2005
14,189
2010
14,444
2015
12,333
2022
12,889
2024
12,760
*December for each year shown. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Economists who have studied the trend conclude that the main factors behind the decline of manufacturing employment include continuous automation, significant gains in productivity across much of the sector, and shifts in aggregate demand and consumption away from goods and toward services. Trade policy has also played a part, notably China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the subsequent dramatic expansion of its role in global manufacturing supply chains.
Contrary to what President Trump suggests, manufacturing’s shrinking place in the overall economy is not a uniquely American phenomenon. As Harvard economist Robert Lawrence recently observed “the employment share of manufacturing is declining in mature economies regardless of their overall industrial policy approaches. The trend is apparent both in economies that have adopted free-market policies… and in those with interventionist policies… All of the evidence points to deep and powerful forces that drive the long-term decline in manufacturing’s share of jobs and GDP as countries become richer.”
This brings us back to the president’s seeming determination to rapidly ramp up manufacturing investment and production as a core element of his “America First” program. An important issue overlooked by the administration is where to find the workers to staff a resurgent U.S. manufacturing sector. For while manufacturing has become a notably “capital-intensive” part of the U.S. economy, workers are still needed. And today, it’s hard to see where they will be found. This is especially true given the Trump administration’s well-advertised skepticism about the benefits of immigration.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate across America’s manufacturing industries collectively stands at a record low 2.9 per cent, well below the economy-wide rate of 4.5 per cent. In a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers, almost 70 per cent of American manufacturers cited the inability to attract and retain qualified employees as the number one barrier to business growth. A cursory look at the leading industry trade journals confirms that skill and talent shortages remain persistent in many parts of U.S. manufacturing—and that shortages are destined to get worse amid the expected significant jump in manufacturing investment being sought by the Trump administration.
As often seems to be the case with Trump’s stated policy objectives, the math surrounding his manufacturing agenda doesn’t add up. Manufacturing in America is in far better shape than the president acknowledges. And a tariff-driven avalanche of manufacturing investment—should one occur—will soon find the sector reeling from an unprecedented human resource crisis.
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“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.
It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.
Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.
And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.
The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.
The betrayal is worse in B.C.
This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.
What about the rich?
Yup, you guessed it: richer.
Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.
“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.
That pact broke somewhere along the way.
Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.
Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.
Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.
Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.
But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works
With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?
A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.
That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.
The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.
To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)
I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.
The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.
Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.
Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.
Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! – is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
