President Donald Trump's promised economic "liberation" through tariffs has yielded a starkly different result: a steady decline in manufacturing employment and sluggish overall job growth, according to an analysis of federal data.
Promises vs. Reality: The Tariff Fallout
Since announcing his sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs on most imports in April, the United States has shed manufacturing jobs every single month. There are now 67,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when the tariffs were imposed, directly contradicting Trump's claims of a sectoral revival.
"Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country," Trump declared falsely on April 2, stating that 10,000 new manufacturing jobs had already been created. The data from his own Department of Labor tells a different story.
A Stark Contrast in Job Creation
The comparison with his predecessor, Joe Biden, is particularly grim. Over four years, Biden's economy added more than 4 million jobs per year, averaging 336,225 per month. Even discounting the post-pandemic recovery, job growth from February 2023 through January 2025 averaged 178,042 monthly.
In contrast, since Trump returned to office, the economy has added only 499,000 total jobs, or 49,900 per month. The situation worsened after the tariff announcement; from May through November, net job gains were a mere 119,000, or about 17,000 per month, with several months recording net losses.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers attributes the poor performance to more than just tariffs. "It's also uncertainty, chaos, incompetence, and a radical and idiosyncratic approach to economic policy," he said.
Rising Costs and Falling Confidence
The tariff policy has also fueled inflation, particularly for groceries. After falling to 1.8% in Biden's last year, the food inflation rate jumped to 3.1% following Trump's tariffs.
Trump's own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, conceded the policy's pain in a Vanity Fair article, stating, "It's been more painful than I expected." Andrew Bates, a former Biden White House spokesman, called the tariffs "an historic sales tax hike on working people."
Wolfers points to the unemployment rate, which has risen through 2025, coinciding with "a sharp rise in uncertainty and a sharp fall in business and consumer confidence." The conclusion, he suggests, is clear: "Economic policy has been chaotic, incoherent, run by fools, and poorly implemented."
