The Daily Dish
October 14, 2026
The Trump Administration and Manufacturing
In a generous effort to fill our holiday weekend, the Trump Administration posted The State of American Manufacturing on Saturday, October 10. Who needs Georgia vs. Alabama anyway? Not surprisingly, the administration’s Council of Economic Advisers concludes that things are good – really good:
Manufacturing jobs are reshoring in America after the Biden Administration shipped over 200,000 American jobs overseas in its last two years, factory construction is soaring as President Trump’s tariff policies incentivized companies to make their products here in the USA.
The claim about tariff policies caught Eakinomics’ eye. The poster child for this approach is the steel tariffs that the president imposed during his first term in office. The Biden Administration retained the tariffs, and President Trump raised them during this term. This is far from a hypothetical. The tariffs have been in place for nearly 10 years. Surely there is a gusher of steel jobs to be found.
Not exactly. There were 84,100 steel jobs in 2018, which has “exploded” to 85,000 in 2025. And the only new steel plant anyone has heard about is the president’s announcement of a $15 billion steel mill in Lee County, Iowa, to be built by Mesabi Metallics. That announcement required preferential financing by the Export-Import Bank, not exactly a tribute to the power of tariffs. Oh, and there are a few other glitches:
“They’ve already started building,” Trump said.That’s not true, according to TV6 Investigates’ review of Lee County land records. The review found no major property purchases tied to the project this year.County officials say they don’t have details from the company about its plans. No permits have come before supervisors.“Something of this scale, if it does end up landing in Lee County, chances are we’ll benefit from improvements to our infrastructure, utilities, roads,” said Ginger Knisley, chairman of the Lee County Board.The financial side isn’t settled either. The Iowa Legislature will meet Friday in a special session to debate incentives for the company to build in Iowa.
And that is the best tariff example.
The report doesn’t help itself with some blatant cherry-picking of the data. It touts 101,000 durable manufacturing jobs in 2026, but omits the fact that it lost 61,000 in 2025, that nondurable manufacturing employment is down both years, and that manufacturing employment as a whole has declined.
Eakinomics probably should have watched the game.
