Manufacturing has long been a cornerstone of the U.S. economy and a vital pathway to middle-class stability for millions of Americans. Supporting the sector’s success benefits all of us. Yet despite President Trump’s campaign promise of a manufacturing renaissance, his administration has shown little grasp of the global production landscape, the role of federal support, or of the strategic planning needed to achieve such a goal. Further damaging the prospect of a manufacturing resurgence, the president’s massive and haphazardly crafted global tariffs have disrupted tight-knit supply chains, and threaten to throw the entire economy, including manufacturers, into chaos. Additionally, the very momentum behind today’s reindustrialization efforts could be undermined by Congress, as the president’s budget reconciliation plan prioritizes tax breaks for the wealthy over sustaining the bipartisan industrial investments that spurred a 200-percent increase in the construction of factories in the United States during the Biden administration.
Recent developments in the trade war will only make a superficial difference for the sector, and that’s assuming the new policies hold. On May 11, the United States and China reached a preliminary agreement to ease trade tensions by reducing tariffs on each other’s goods as part of a ninety-day pause intended to facilitate further negotiations, lowering U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent, and Chinese tariffs on U.S. products from 125 percent to 10 percent. The announcement sparked gains in global markets, but the temporary relief does nothing to address deeper structural issues in the U.S. economic relationship with China, including intellectual property rights, forced technology transfers, and supply chain dependencies. Even if the administration manages to learn from its own mistakes and provide domestic and global manufacturers with a stable tariff regime, this won’t be enough to reshore the jobs that manufacturing communities want and need. Instead, we need comprehensive, strategic policies rooted in critical national needs and our economic position in the world.
Reshoring Requires Stability
As counterproductive as the recent tariff swerves have been, what ultimately undermines U.S. manufacturing more than the tariffs is Trump’s impulsive, deal-driven approach to economic policy. No firm will commit to a decade-long investment in U.S. production if the economic rationale can vanish overnight with the stroke of a pen. Manufacturers require a stable and predictable policy environment to make the long-term capital investments needed to restructure business strategies, reconfigure supply chains, build facilities, and train workers. Trump’s tariff regime—imposed and lifted without clear rationale—exemplifies this erratic leadership style, creating deep uncertainty for manufacturers navigating complex, long-term investment decisions. The result is the worst of all worlds: higher prices for consumers in the short term and stalled reshoring in the long term, as domestic firms hesitate to invest in an unpredictable policy environment.
No firm will commit to a decade-long investment in U.S. production if the economic rationale can vanish overnight with the stroke of a pen.
In contrast, the Biden administration—under U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai—worked to stabilize trade policy by embedding it within a longer-term industrial strategy. By explicitly linking trade decisions to labor standards, domestic production goals, and supply chain resilience, this approach provided the predictability manufacturers need to plan and invest. Siting production facilities and sourcing components is a complex equation: while offshoring may appear cost-effective, a full accounting of logistics, risks, and delays often makes reshoring more viable. But even when the economics favor domestic investment, businesses will only act if policy signals are consistent over time. Without that stability, even well-intentioned tariffs won’t drive sustained industrial growth.
Picking the Right Industries
Our industrial policy should focus on strategic, technology-intensive sectors, as well as other key products related to national defense, medical supply chains, semiconductors, and clean energy. A strong example of this approach is the bipartisan CHIPS legislation, which prioritized semiconductors for domestic security reasons and targeted a highly automated, high-value-add technology: policymakers used detailed financial modeling to structure subsidies that close the cost gap and make U.S. manufacturing competitive with global production. These evidence-based strategies focus our policy on sectors that are financially viable and essential to national security and economic well-being. Investing in these sectors—and the upstream supply chains they rely on—can reduce our dependence on volatile global markets, especially those tied to geopolitical rivals.
These evidence-based strategies focus our policy on sectors that are financially viable and essential to national security and economic well-being.
Advancing Automation
Blanket tariffs won’t rebuild domestic manufacturing because they fail to address the core challenge: the need for advanced, cost-effective production methods that make U.S. operations globally competitive. For domestic manufacturing to be viable, operations must embrace automation and advanced technology—relying on robotics, AI, and real-time data systems to boost productivity and complement the ingenuity of the American workforce. For example, the Cleveland Cliffs steel mill in Cleveland is the most productive in the world in making high-grade steel, and has achieved this level of performance by relying heavily on automation in its production as a strategy to retain well-paid, unionized steel worker jobs, who in turn increase productivity and quality at a time of growing international competition.
Unfortunately, the current automation systems in most U.S. plants still lack the precision and cost-efficiency to handle complex tasks like assembling small electronics. There are no financially viable robots able to, for example, tighten tiny screws or route and connect flexible cables in consumer electronics. To close this gap, federal support for R&D, commercialization, and scaling is essential—especially for small and midsize manufacturers who cannot afford cutting-edge equipment on their own. Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to federal research funding directly undermines these efforts, stalling discovery at precisely the moment when manufacturers must tighten innovation cycles if they want to compete.
Tariffs Must Be Crafted to Support High-Road, High-Wage Jobs
Addressing production and supply chain challenges is only half the battle the United States faces in growing its domestic manufacturing capacity. Countries with deep and robust industrial ecosystems also have an existing talent pool of trained workers to meet industry need. This means that one of the biggest barriers to the growth of U.S. manufacturing capacity is the development of a domestic talent pool with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to scale onshore production.
Overcoming this hurdle will require developing a labor force with expertise in automation, robotics, precision machining, and advanced quality control systems. And building that workforce will require more than training: U.S. manufacturers need to pay competitive wages to attract workers into a field that still requires greater rigor and higher safety risk than comparable jobs in other industries, especially for those with less than a college degree. Declining unionization contributes to lagging wages in factories. Without a robust workforce capable of operating and evolving alongside modern technologies, even the most well-funded industrial strategies will fail to deliver the family-sustaining jobs that Americans associate with manufacturing.
Tariffs Alone Don’t Guarantee Fair Trade
Tariffs can be an effective tool when targeted precisely—but a blanket, one-size-fits-all approach undermines their purpose and weakens global competitiveness. When countries violate the rules of international trade by illegally dumping products or artificially lowering prices through state subsidies, our trade laws promote mechanisms for investigations and specific tariff increases. These strategies have been used for products like washing machines, solar panels, and steel, but that application is a far cry from the current administration’s policies.
Enforcing and reforming the labor and environmental provisions of fair trade agreements can promote the goals of increasing U.S. output and promoting job creation responsibly. But unfortunately the Trump administration has taken aim at the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau, whose programs are key to monitoring compliance and bolstering worker rights overseas.
Reshoring Manufacturing Requires Long-Term Vision
Reshoring America’s industrial base presents a powerful opportunity to enhance national security, increase economic competitiveness, and rebuild pathways to the middle class. But realizing this potential demands a comprehensive industrial strategy anchored in public–private alignment, long-term investment, and smart incentives. The advantages of this approach can be seen in the success of the Inflation Reduction Act, which pairs public investment with private capital tax credits, and has succeeded in spurring billions of dollars of investment in battery manufacturing and future-focused sectors—all that with the broad-based collaboration of political and labor leadership, the latter of whom were poised to receive well-paid union jobs in the bargain. In one of the greatest tragedies in recent decades, this wave of reindustrialization and national competitiveness could be undercut by Congress in service of tax cuts for the wealthy in the president’s budget reconciliation bill. That’s the wrong way to develop industrial policy. Done right, manufacturing can once again serve as a cornerstone of broad-based economic growth and upward mobility.
Tags: U.S. manufacturing, tariffs, trade war, reshoring
There’s a Smart Way to Renew American Manufacturing. It’s Not Trump’s Strategy.
Manufacturing has long been a cornerstone of the U.S. economy and a vital pathway to middle-class stability for millions of Americans. Supporting the sector’s success benefits all of us. Yet despite President Trump’s campaign promise of a manufacturing renaissance, his administration has shown little grasp of the global production landscape, the role of federal support, or of the strategic planning needed to achieve such a goal. Further damaging the prospect of a manufacturing resurgence, the president’s massive and haphazardly crafted global tariffs have disrupted tight-knit supply chains, and threaten to throw the entire economy, including manufacturers, into chaos. Additionally, the very momentum behind today’s reindustrialization efforts could be undermined by Congress, as the president’s budget reconciliation plan prioritizes tax breaks for the wealthy over sustaining the bipartisan industrial investments that spurred a 200-percent increase in the construction of factories in the United States during the Biden administration.
Recent developments in the trade war will only make a superficial difference for the sector, and that’s assuming the new policies hold. On May 11, the United States and China reached a preliminary agreement to ease trade tensions by reducing tariffs on each other’s goods as part of a ninety-day pause intended to facilitate further negotiations, lowering U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent, and Chinese tariffs on U.S. products from 125 percent to 10 percent. The announcement sparked gains in global markets, but the temporary relief does nothing to address deeper structural issues in the U.S. economic relationship with China, including intellectual property rights, forced technology transfers, and supply chain dependencies. Even if the administration manages to learn from its own mistakes and provide domestic and global manufacturers with a stable tariff regime, this won’t be enough to reshore the jobs that manufacturing communities want and need. Instead, we need comprehensive, strategic policies rooted in critical national needs and our economic position in the world.
Reshoring Requires Stability
As counterproductive as the recent tariff swerves have been, what ultimately undermines U.S. manufacturing more than the tariffs is Trump’s impulsive, deal-driven approach to economic policy. No firm will commit to a decade-long investment in U.S. production if the economic rationale can vanish overnight with the stroke of a pen. Manufacturers require a stable and predictable policy environment to make the long-term capital investments needed to restructure business strategies, reconfigure supply chains, build facilities, and train workers. Trump’s tariff regime—imposed and lifted without clear rationale—exemplifies this erratic leadership style, creating deep uncertainty for manufacturers navigating complex, long-term investment decisions. The result is the worst of all worlds: higher prices for consumers in the short term and stalled reshoring in the long term, as domestic firms hesitate to invest in an unpredictable policy environment.
In contrast, the Biden administration—under U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai—worked to stabilize trade policy by embedding it within a longer-term industrial strategy. By explicitly linking trade decisions to labor standards, domestic production goals, and supply chain resilience, this approach provided the predictability manufacturers need to plan and invest. Siting production facilities and sourcing components is a complex equation: while offshoring may appear cost-effective, a full accounting of logistics, risks, and delays often makes reshoring more viable. But even when the economics favor domestic investment, businesses will only act if policy signals are consistent over time. Without that stability, even well-intentioned tariffs won’t drive sustained industrial growth.
Picking the Right Industries
Our industrial policy should focus on strategic, technology-intensive sectors, as well as other key products related to national defense, medical supply chains, semiconductors, and clean energy. A strong example of this approach is the bipartisan CHIPS legislation, which prioritized semiconductors for domestic security reasons and targeted a highly automated, high-value-add technology: policymakers used detailed financial modeling to structure subsidies that close the cost gap and make U.S. manufacturing competitive with global production. These evidence-based strategies focus our policy on sectors that are financially viable and essential to national security and economic well-being. Investing in these sectors—and the upstream supply chains they rely on—can reduce our dependence on volatile global markets, especially those tied to geopolitical rivals.
Advancing Automation
Blanket tariffs won’t rebuild domestic manufacturing because they fail to address the core challenge: the need for advanced, cost-effective production methods that make U.S. operations globally competitive. For domestic manufacturing to be viable, operations must embrace automation and advanced technology—relying on robotics, AI, and real-time data systems to boost productivity and complement the ingenuity of the American workforce. For example, the Cleveland Cliffs steel mill in Cleveland is the most productive in the world in making high-grade steel, and has achieved this level of performance by relying heavily on automation in its production as a strategy to retain well-paid, unionized steel worker jobs, who in turn increase productivity and quality at a time of growing international competition.
Unfortunately, the current automation systems in most U.S. plants still lack the precision and cost-efficiency to handle complex tasks like assembling small electronics. There are no financially viable robots able to, for example, tighten tiny screws or route and connect flexible cables in consumer electronics. To close this gap, federal support for R&D, commercialization, and scaling is essential—especially for small and midsize manufacturers who cannot afford cutting-edge equipment on their own. Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to federal research funding directly undermines these efforts, stalling discovery at precisely the moment when manufacturers must tighten innovation cycles if they want to compete.
Tariffs Must Be Crafted to Support High-Road, High-Wage Jobs
Addressing production and supply chain challenges is only half the battle the United States faces in growing its domestic manufacturing capacity. Countries with deep and robust industrial ecosystems also have an existing talent pool of trained workers to meet industry need. This means that one of the biggest barriers to the growth of U.S. manufacturing capacity is the development of a domestic talent pool with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to scale onshore production.
Overcoming this hurdle will require developing a labor force with expertise in automation, robotics, precision machining, and advanced quality control systems. And building that workforce will require more than training: U.S. manufacturers need to pay competitive wages to attract workers into a field that still requires greater rigor and higher safety risk than comparable jobs in other industries, especially for those with less than a college degree. Declining unionization contributes to lagging wages in factories. Without a robust workforce capable of operating and evolving alongside modern technologies, even the most well-funded industrial strategies will fail to deliver the family-sustaining jobs that Americans associate with manufacturing.
Tariffs Alone Don’t Guarantee Fair Trade
Tariffs can be an effective tool when targeted precisely—but a blanket, one-size-fits-all approach undermines their purpose and weakens global competitiveness. When countries violate the rules of international trade by illegally dumping products or artificially lowering prices through state subsidies, our trade laws promote mechanisms for investigations and specific tariff increases. These strategies have been used for products like washing machines, solar panels, and steel, but that application is a far cry from the current administration’s policies.
Enforcing and reforming the labor and environmental provisions of fair trade agreements can promote the goals of increasing U.S. output and promoting job creation responsibly. But unfortunately the Trump administration has taken aim at the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau, whose programs are key to monitoring compliance and bolstering worker rights overseas.
Reshoring Manufacturing Requires Long-Term Vision
Reshoring America’s industrial base presents a powerful opportunity to enhance national security, increase economic competitiveness, and rebuild pathways to the middle class. But realizing this potential demands a comprehensive industrial strategy anchored in public–private alignment, long-term investment, and smart incentives. The advantages of this approach can be seen in the success of the Inflation Reduction Act, which pairs public investment with private capital tax credits, and has succeeded in spurring billions of dollars of investment in battery manufacturing and future-focused sectors—all that with the broad-based collaboration of political and labor leadership, the latter of whom were poised to receive well-paid union jobs in the bargain. In one of the greatest tragedies in recent decades, this wave of reindustrialization and national competitiveness could be undercut by Congress in service of tax cuts for the wealthy in the president’s budget reconciliation bill. That’s the wrong way to develop industrial policy. Done right, manufacturing can once again serve as a cornerstone of broad-based economic growth and upward mobility.
Tags: U.S. manufacturing, tariffs, trade war, reshoring