Trump tariffs hurting US manufacturers, data suggests

US factories have been struggling since President Trump's introduction of tariffs on a wide range of goods. Data shows that the country has lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year.

There’s a growing body of data showing the tariffs President Donald Trump said would help American factories are, in fact, squashing many of them.

Take, for example, Allen Engineering, which makes industrial equipment in northeast Arkansas. Jay Allen says his costs for the parts for his power trowels have been hiked by import taxes. Allen says he lost money last year, even though he cut his payroll and increased prices.

Data shows manufacturing jobs dropped during Trump’s first year back in office.

The White House says the Republican president's policies will take time to make a difference. President Donald Trump's tariffs, which were intended to help American manufacturing, instead, is hurting them. By raising the cost of imported goods and parts, the tariffs have raised the cost of doing business in the United States for American factories.

Many manufacturers have had to raise prices for their goods in order to make up for the cost of tariffs. And in other cases, they've had to cut jobs to save money and offset the cost of tariffs.

In fact, in the past year, US manufacturing has actually cut employment by almost 100,000 jobs. And that's the opposite of what President Trump said the tariffs were intended to do, which is to bring jobs back to the United States and support American manufacturing. Now the White House says that there is construction of many new factories going on and that the building of these new factories will lead to more manufacturing jobs.

But those construction projects largely date from when President Joe Biden put in place laws to subsidise the manufacture of semiconductors and new green technologies. So there isn't much evidence that the tariffs are having that much positive impact so far.