- Question
- Has Trump kept his promises?
- Position‹2 of 2
- Trump has not kept his promises
- Argument‹4 of 4
Trump has not brought back manufacturing jobs
Trump has failed to retain manufacturing jobs in America despite using subsidies and tax breaks.
The argument
Trump's promise to bring back manufacturing jobs won him the state of Michigan by 0.23% in 2016. That margin is why the promise is the right measure to judge him by: it was decisive in a state that proved decisive, so the commitment was not a peripheral pledge but the basis on which a critical part of his support was given. Nonetheless, Trump's trade wars have worked against him and his promise to retain jobs in factories. The figures from those states do not show the promised reversal, and the decline had begun before any external shock could be blamed for it. Even before the pandemic hit, manufacturing workers in Michigan were down 10,200 from February 2019 to February 2020. The pandemic only aggravated this, with around 66,500 fewer manufacturing workers from July 2019 to 2020. Similarly, Ohio lost 2,200 jobs in the year to February 2020, rising to 48,000 job losses from July 2019 to July 2020. Separating the two periods matters, because the pre-pandemic numbers record what the policy was doing on its own. This trend is ongoing. The pandemic aside, manufacturing jobs are expected to keep falling. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released an analysis in September; in this study, they find the manufacturing sector is expected to lose around 450,000 workers by 2029. A projection over that span concerns forces no single administration created, which is part of the point: the promise was made about a long-run decline, and the decline has continued through it. Measured against the commitment that won him Michigan, the manufacturing jobs did not come back.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Trump has implemented measures to stem the fall in manufacturing jobs. Pre-pandemic, Trump had used subsidies and tariffs on imported manufactured products. By the beginning of 2020, 450,000 new manufacturing jobs had been created.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Attributing the losses to the trade wars is asserted rather than shown. Tariffs raised input costs for some manufacturers while protecting others, and the premise does not separate that effect from the automation and offshoring trends that had been shrinking the sector for decades before 2016. [Rejecting P2] The figures cover two states and a window that includes the pandemic shutdown, and the projection to 2029 concerns future employment rather than the record under review. A verdict on a promise also needs a baseline the premise never states: manufacturing employment rose over the first three years and then fell sharply in 2020, so the conclusion depends entirely on which endpoints are chosen.