The promise was simple: slap tariffs on everything, factories come back, workers win. Trump said it enough times it started to sound like gravity. Twelve months in, the U.S. has shed 98,000 manufacturing jobs. Not some. Ninety-eight thousand. Since April’s tariff escalation alone, 72,000 more. The factories aren’t roaring back. The workers are just gone.
He just announced 25% tariffs on EU cars and trucks. More factories coming, supposedly. Except supply chain managers surveyed by CNBC are now reporting double the layoffs compared to last year — 32% reporting job cuts, up from 16% in April. The tariffs didn’t bring back factories. They gave American manufacturers higher input costs, squeezed margins, and a reason to cut heads. The only thing roaring back is the spin.
Nobody voted for this. Working people were told tariffs were for them — a middle finger to globalism, a lifeline for the rust belt. What they got was more expensive cars, layoffs downstream, and a president counting a factory groundbreaking as a win while the existing workforce gets pink slips. The guys who lobbied for tariff carve-outs got what they needed. Everyone else is still waiting.