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US President Donald Trump says his tariffs will spark a “manufacturing renaissance.” But the duties themselves are making that already monumental task even more challenging.
In order to build and expand factories, companies need machinery and raw materials — many of which are typically imported and now subject to a variety of punitive tariffs. That compounds a host of pre-existing obstacles to realizing Trump’s vow to re-industrialize America, which has lost 6.8 million manufacturing jobs since 1979 as production has moved to cheaper countries and automation has increased.
Labor shortages, a costlier workforce, global supply chains: the Covid pandemic put a spotlight on the massive challenges of reshoring factories. Now Trump’s chaotic overhaul of trade policy has added a layer of uncertainty to producers who need some degree of assurance on tariffs — how elevated they’ll stay and for how long — before making long-term investments.
“The obstacles are huge,” said Gordon Hanson, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of the authors of a paper that coined the term “China shock” for the loss of US manufacturing from imports of cheaper goods. “My gut tells me it’s not going to happen.”
Nora Orozco wants to open a Texas factory with 200 new jobs for her footwear company Evolutions Brands and eventually move production from Mexico there. But those plans are on hold because she needs to buy equipment that only comes from China, and Trump’s tariffs have more than doubled the cost.
“I like the idea of onshoring, but this makes it impossible for us,” said Orozco, who, along with many other executives, have filed over 1,100 individual requests for tariff exclusions for Chinese-made machinery. More than half of the US’s imported goods are inputs for manufacturing, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have tried to revitalize US manufacturing that reached its peak employment in 1979, but it’s now only 8% of the workforce. The industry had nearly half a million vacancies in March, the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a 2024 Deloitte analysis showed 1.9 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled in the next decade.