Bringing Back Manufacturing or Bringing Back Manufacturing Jobs? Manufacturing Will Cost Money. The Jobs Won’t Be Brought Back.

I am not certain what Donald Trump is trying to do with his tariffs.¹  Is he trying to get manufacturing jobs back or is he worried about the United States not having the manufacturing capabilities it needs for national security purposes?  Does he think that having more manufacturing jobs will make us richer?²  Or is it just a matter of him thinking we have been getting ripped off by China and the EU (among others) and he wants to “get even”?

Whatever the reason, President Trump apparently thinks tariffs are answer.  I’m not sure whether his idea is to leave the tariffs in place, thereby making products from other countries more expensive, so companies will make them here and we will get richer (because we’ll have more jobs or we’ll make stuff or something else).  Or he is using the tariffs as a club to get other countries to buy more stuff from us (by lowering whatever barriers to trade they have or just agreeing to buy more stuff from us so we will remove/lower the tariffs)?³  Or maybe it’s just about the deal.⁴

As I said, I don’t know which it is, but then I’m not sure President Trump knows what he wants, at least until he sees what other countries may be willing to offer us.  If it’s just a matter of “winning” and not getting taken advantage of anymore, then maybe he won’t even know what he wants until he sees what other countries come back with. 

Assuming there is a reason other than just “winning,” let me make several comments.  First, are we talking about bringing manufacturing back or bringing manufacturing jobs back?  I understand there is a national security reason to have certain kinds of manufacturing capabilities in the United States.  But having manufacturing capabilities for national security purposes and/or having more manufacturing done in the United States is different than having more manufacturing jobs.  For national security, we need the manufacturing capabilities to build ships, planes, ammunition, etc. – and the component parts you need to build the ships, planes, ammunition, etc.  But we don’t need manufacturing jobs; we just need the manufacturing capabilities to make the products we need.

In addition to national defense, we may want to make sure we have manufacturing and production capabilities for other things in the United States.  For example, we may want to make sure we can make certain drugs and/or medical products in the United States.  But we need to understand that this will cost money.  Europe is facing this problem now.   The Financial Times reports⁵:

“Europe’s last manufacturer of ingredients for some vital antibiotics is closing its biggest domestic factory and shifting some production to China ….

Lossmaking Xellia Pharmaceuticals said it could survive against Chinese competition only by moving many of its products to its plant there. …

Chief executive Michael Kocher said that unless government-funded health systems were prepared to pay more for generic medicines, more companies based  in the EU would move factories. …

With health systems unwilling to raise medicine prices, Kocher said, subsidies were the only way to ensure EU retained some control over important ingredients.”

In other words, we can keep production here, but it will cost money, possibly lots of money, and we will have to pay for it.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it.  I’m just saying it’s going to cost money, and we have to be willing to pay what it costs.

Second, if, as former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer talked about on “Firing Line”, we are talking about getting back the jobs we lost 20 or 30 years ago, that is not going to happen.  Manufacturing today is different than the manufacturing of 20 or 30 years ago.  The jobs of 20 or 30 years ago aren’t there anymore – or at least they won’t be there if the manufacturing is done in the United States.  Innovation, technology, etc., means that many fewer workers can make much more stuff.  And the jobs are different, too.  Manufacturing jobs today require different skills and abilities than the manufacturing jobs of 20 or 30 years ago.  And that would be true even if the manufacturing had stayed here and never left.

Third, this isn’t the first time jobs have been lost in the United States or in parts of it.  Before the clothing and textile industry jobs left the South for Asia and elsewhere, they left New England for the South.  Coal mining jobs that have been lost in West Virginia and other states haven’t been lost because we are importing energy from other countries.  They’ve been lost because they were hard, dirty jobs that made lots of people sick.  And even if we needed coal today (which we don’t), it’s cheaper and healthier to strip mine coal out West than to dig it underground in West Virginia.  

For that matter, the next time you are driving through the Midwest or the Great Plains, get off the Interstate and drive through rural America.  Look at all the farm houses that used to be lived in by the farmers who farmed that land.  A lot of those houses are empty or lived in by somebody else.  Look at all the little towns that used to be thriving but aren’t any more.  Towns that used to have their own high school but had to turn that school into a junior high or shut it down entirely and are now sending their kids to another town for high school.  Towns all over the Midwest and the Great Plains have been devasted.  Agriculture is so much more productive today that we don’t need as many farmers as we used to.  We produce much more food with many fewer farmers.  Is that a problem?  Is that something we need to fix?  Are we supposed to bring those jobs back, too?

One final point.  I wonder how many of those people in Washington talking about bringing back manufacturing jobs have ever worked in a manufacturing plant.  I did.  For three summers while I was in college, I worked at a plant making bumpers for school buses and trucks.  It was a fine place to work, and the guys I worked with were good people.  But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to 1968 or ’69 or ’70.  Or that the jobs would still be the same.  They wouldn’t.

In other words, if we impose tariffs like President Trump sometimes talks about,⁶ we might get some new jobs in manufacturing plants, but the manufacturing jobs that were lost aren’t coming back.  That doesn’t mean we don’t need to help the people who lost those jobs, but telling them the jobs are coming back isn’t helping.  It’s getting people’s hopes up when it’s not going to happen.  And that is not right.
----------
¹ I started writing this when they were a lot higher than they are now, but I think then points remain because they are still a lot higher than they were when he took office.  And who knows if he might do it again.
² As former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in the “Firing Line” podcast.  Here.
³ His pauses or temporary reductions in tariffs while we negotiate may indicate this is what he is trying to do.  Who knows.
⁴ See, for example, Jemima Kelly, “Trump and the art of dealing,” Financial Times, April 28, 2025.
⁵ Andy Sounds, “Brussels frets over growing reliance on China as Europe’s key drug plant shuts”, Financial Times, May 7, 2025.
⁶ Or if we hand out all kinds of subsidies to companies to build plants in the United States, like the Biden administration did.