2024 Fact Check 1: Did Trump’s policies destroy manufacturing jobs, reversing Obama’s “booming” economy?
This allegation has been peddled since September 2020, and continues to this day, from virtually every avenue through which the American people obtain political information. But is it true? No.
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2024 Fact Check: Introduction - by Jon Sutz
The claim: Trump’s policies destroyed manufacturing jobs, reversing Obama’s “booming” economy
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the DNC, and many of America’s most influential news organs keep claiming that President Obama handed Donald Trump a “booming” economy, but that Trump's policies destroyed manufacturing jobs. Examples:
On September 29, 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden said: “[Trump] comes in on a booming economy. He blew it. He blew it. What he did, even before COVID, manufacturing went in the hole. Manufacturing went in the hole.”
On September 10, 2024, Vice President Harris said: “Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”
Many if not most top-tier news organs have played right along for the last four years, parroting this narrative, in various forms, as if it were true — yet to my knowledge none have ever directly challenged Biden, Harris, the DNC, nor their allied “influencers.”
These claims are false — or at a minimum, are wildly decontextualized.
Fact Check: By the end of his first three years in office, Trump’s policies reversed the manufacturing job losses that occurred under Obama
Here are the facts:
Barack Obama inherited the Great Recession, which ended in June 2009, five months into his eight-year presidency.
According to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, over the 8 years of Obama's presidency, 190,000 manufacturing jobs were lost.
Under Trump, in contrast, 441,000 manufacturing jobs were gained as of March 1, 2020, when COVID struck, which, within a few weeks, triggered a severe decline of jobs in America and other industrial nations, including in the manufacturing sector.
For convenience, see the “All Employees, Manufacturing” report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, containing an interactive timeline of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A graphic excerpt is below, with the time period under discussion highlighted:
No matter who was president when COVID began spreading like wildfire among the American population, there would have been a steep, rapid decline in all jobs — including manufacturing, at least for some considerable initial period of time, as in the last ten months of a new president’s first term.
Regarding Harris’s claim, while she is technically correct — that by the last day of Trump’s presidency, January 20, 2021, the total number of manufacturing jobs was lower than when he took office — this claim is made (and repeated endlessly) without mentioning that (a) Trump’s economic policies produced a significant increase in manufacturing jobs, before COVID set in, or (b) These policies reversed the 8-year slide in manufacturing jobs under Obama.
Don’t the top-tier news organizations know that Biden, Harris, the DNC and others are peddling a lie?
Yes. Here’s the proof:
On October 8, 2020, NBC News provided a fact-check on Biden’s allegation, but it was buried deep in an article, and it is impossible to directly link to it (you’ll have to scroll to find the title, “Fact check: Manufacturing job losses under Obama, Trump”).
On January 20, 2020, PolitiFact — which is used and funded by a variety of the most powerful news organizations and social media tech companies — presented a reasonably accurate report on the results of Trump’s economic policies, including the spike in manufacturing jobs.
And on February 1, 2019, Forbes featured an article entitled, “Manufacturers Added 6 Times More Jobs Under Trump Than Under Obama’s Last 2 Years.”
The above is just a sampling of the open-source evidence that proves the results of Trump’s policies on manufacturing jobs in America, pre-COVID, all of which is well-known to the decision makers at America’s top news organs.
So why have these news organs not directly pressed Biden, Harris, the DNC and others who keep parroting the false claim that Trump’s policies destroyed manufacturing jobs?
Only they can answer this question — but I submit one hint can be found in the fact that of American journalists who make monetary donations to political campaigns, 96% of this cash goes to Democrats.
Conclusion
Without being aware of all of the above data, I believe the vast majority of honest, reasonable but uninformed Americans from across the political spectrum, can be (and I argue, have been) tricked into believing that Trump’s policies hurt the manufacturing sector. To grasp how widespread this lie has been allowed to metastasize, consider a few questions:
Have you ever seen the data in this infographic report presented, anywhere, least of all in such a simple, easy-to-understand visual format?
Have you ever seen any news organ present these facts, or hold Biden, Harris or the DNC to account?
Have you ever seen the GOP or Trump campaign refute these false and decontextualized allegations? (I could not even find a simple fact-check link of any kind on the front page of either site, as of September 30, 2024; see for yourself here, here.)
As as result of this void, Americans have been misled into believing that Trump’s economic policies are designed only to help the super-rich, which is (allegedly) what they did while he was president.
Addendum: Bruce Springsteen implicitly peddles this false claim
After I finished this infographic report, music legend Bruce Springsteen dropped a video on October 2, explaining why he is endorsing Kamala Harris (transcript here). Although he doesn’t specifically mention the issue of manufacturing jobs, Springsteen said Trump’s policies were (and are) aimed at helping the super-rich (like Springsteen himself, who is now a billionaire) — not blue-collar workers, who constitute a huge portion of “The Boss’s” core fan base:
“[Harris-Walz] want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just the few like me on top. That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”
The supreme irony: Springsteen co-hosts a podcast with President Obama, whose policies —as this infographic report demonstrates — were responsible for a steady decline in manufacturing jobs.
Springsteen’s claims also bring to mind a quote by one of President Obama’s super-fans, PBS host Tavis Smiley, who publicly said this, as Obama entered the final stretch of his presidency, about his economic policies, and how they affected black Americans in particular (many of whom work in the manufacturing sector):
“Sadly, and it pains me to say this, over the last decade black folk, in the era of Obama have lost ground in every major economic category. Not one, two or three [categories], but every major economic category, black Americans have lost ground. We’ve been so caught up in the symbolism of the Obama presidency, we haven’t pressed as hard as we should on the substance of this presidency. Black people and black leaders have been too deferential to this president.”
One wonders how Springsteen would respond to Smiley’s assertion, which is backed up by a mountain of economic research data.
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