Trump’s Failed Job Promises Mount

Trump has repeatedly promised to bring back factories, boost job growth, and deliver a manufacturing renaissance — he failed. 

Trump failed to bring back factories or create jobs, despite his promises of an American manufacturing renaissance.

New York Times: “Trump’s Manufacturing Promises Disappoint as Economy Sours”

New York Times: “Foxconn’s failure to create the kind of factory powerhouse that Mr. Trump described demonstrates how the president’s promise of an American manufacturing renaissance has not always resulted in the pledged jobs or economic investment.”

Washington Post: “Trump advertised Carrier’s Dec. 1, 2016, announcement that it would preserve about 800 jobs in Indianapolis as a decisive break from decades of U.S. executives capitalizing on lower labor costs overseas at the expense of blue-collar workers at home. Four years later, it has proved to be nothing of the sort.”

Wages and job growth lagged across the Rust Belt under Trump’s watch, even before the pandemic hit.

Reuters: “The Rust Belt boom that wasn’t: Heartland job growth lagged under Trump”

Reuters: “Through the first three years of the Trump administration the county lost jobs, and brought in slightly less in wages in the first three months of 2020 than in the first three months of 2017 as Trump was taking over. And that was before the pandemic and the associated recession. With the U.S. election just a week away, recently released government data and new analysis show just how little progress Trump made in changing the trajectory of the Rust Belt region that propelled his improbable rise to the White House.”

USA Today: “In fact, the Mahoning Valley has fewer manufacturing jobs today than when Trump made his comments, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing in the Youngstown/Warren/Boardman area is at its worst level since the Great Recession… Of course, the coronavirus pandemic has hammered the economy in 2020, sending millions to the unemployment line. But manufacturing was still hovering around Great Recession levels in the Valley even before the pandemic.”

U.S. manufacturing has been hit especially hard by Trump’s failed trade deal with China, which has left exports far behind pre-trade war levels.

Wall Street Journal: “China Is Far Behind on U.S. Purchases Under Trade Deal”

Peterson Institute For International Economics: “Trump’s complaints about China’s imports historically focused on manufacturing, which makes up 70 percent of goods covered by the purchase commitments… Overall, US exports of manufactured products to China have done poorly in 2020. Through September, exports remained 17 percent lower than pre-trade war levels. And relative to the purchase commitments, manufacturing was only at 56 percent of its seasonally adjusted target for 2020.”

Alliance For American Manufacturing President: “It was just a mistake to have accepted a half-baked trade deal that undermines his own strategy and goals in the long run… The challenge from a manufacturing perspective is none of that is going to remove the most anti-competitive practices, which are the subsidies. In many ways, that opportunity was foreclosed.”

Trump has not offered a detailed economic plan or said how he would fix his broken promises in a second term.

Axios: “President Trump has not laid out an economic agenda for his second term, despite the election being just eight days away.”

KUDLOW: “I don’t see any reason why we have to put out a detailed plan.”