US Manufacturing Is NOT Dead

 As usual, the Wall Street Journal Hate-Trump Rag finds a way to hammer tariffs.  They do it with trickery and deceit.

Alan Tonelson has been on the manufacturing beat for a few decades.

 

...U.S.-based industry added 5,000 jobs on net – its first monthly increase since November, 2024.

Second, revisions were negative.  December’s initial estimate of 8,000 manufacturing jobs lost month-on-month was unchanged, but November’s downwardly revised figure of 2,000 was boosted all the way up to a 10,000 drop – the worst since an identical sequential plunge last August – and October’s downwardly revised 9,000 decrease remained unchanged.

Third, due to the annual benchmark revision released today by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS), the manufacturing jobs record compiled so far by the tariff-heavy second Trump administration looks even better than that of its predecessor than it had before these latest numbers came out....

Tonelson does not wear rose-colored glasses.  But he also provides a startling comparison:

 ...Not that manufacturing’s employment performance under Trump 2.0 has been anything to brag about.  But as of the previous jobs report, between last February (the first full month of President Trump’s second term) through December, manufacturing payrolls were down by 71,000.  During the same period during the pre-tariff-y Biden administration in 2024, such job loss totaled 93,000 – and that with massive subsidies for green manufacturing.

Yet the benchmark revision cut the number of manufacturing jobs created between March, 2024 and March, 2025 by 98,000 – a mainly Biden administration period.  As a result, the manufacturing jobs decline during the first eleven months of Trump 2.0 was downgraded from 71,000 to 81,000.  But the reduction during the final eleven Biden months was upgraded all the way from 93,000 to 179,000.  

In other words, although the Trump 2.0 performance looks a little worse, the comparable Biden performance was nearly twice as bad, and so far has been more than twice as bad as that of the second Trump administration....

 The standard manufacturing-measure indexes for January are very strong, reflecting Trump's 100% deduction for capex; look for much stronger manufacturing employment numbers in the next 6 months.