Trump’s tariffs are aimed (in part) at increasing employment in the United States’ manufacturing industry. According to a White House press release:
President Donald J. Trump is on a mission to make America the manufacturing superpower of the world once again—and already, he has made incredible progress. Companies from around the world are responding with new investments as President Trump levels the playing field for American workers and businesses.
But we have to ask why?
Back when I was a teenager, I hitchhiked around Australia, ending up in Perth, where I got a job working in a factory. I spent 8 hours a day standing in front of a machine making cogwheels. More accurately: drilling six holes in a wheel. Skills required: The ability to stand on your feet (or, if you’re lucky, sit) for 8 hours every day without feeling bored. I was surprised that many of the other people on the factory floor actually enjoyed their jobs!
And what pay could you expect? Unless you were a manager or supervisor, the minimum wage. So what Trump is actually trying to achieve is to increase the number of minimum wage jobs in the United States while excluding the people who would actually take them: immigrants.
There’s certainly no question that manufacturing employment in the United States has declined. As this graph shows:
Manufacturing employment has decreased from 19.531 million in July 1980 to 12.764 million as of February 2025—a drop of 34.6 percent.
In a seeming paradox, at the same time, total manufacturing production has actually increased, as capital, in the form of machines, has replaced labor:
Even though manufacturing output has increased, it’s declined as a percentage of GDP. From 16.09 percent in 1997 to “mere” 10.58 percent in 2022.
To understand why, just look at the top ten American companies by market capitalization:
| Company | Market Cap | |
| 1 | Apple | $2.959 T |
| 2 | Microsoft | $2.76 T |
| 3 | NVIDIA | $2.48 T |
| 4 | Alphabet (Google) | $1.88 T |
| 5 | Amazon | $1.83 T |
| 6 | Meta Platforms (Facebook) | $1.27 T |
| 7 | Berkshire Hathaway | $1.11 T |
| 8 | Broadcom | $821 B |
| 9 | Tesla | $776.37 B |
| 10 | Eli Lilly | $754.27 B |
As you can see, seven of those ten (in bold type) are internet related. Furthermore, 65 of the world’s top 100 internet-related companies are American, compared to a mere 14 which are Chinese. In other words the United States dominates the internet/computer market worldwide.
What’s more, the gross annual sales of those seven internet companies total $1,682,765,000, or 6.54 percent of US GNP. If we added in the gross of America’s 58 other internet-related companies the total gross sales would probably match, if not exceed, US manufacturing output.
Perhaps more importantly, if you want to work for Google, Facebook, Amazon, or the other major American internet companies, you need a university degree (a PhD is even better). The only exception being if you’re applying for the advertising departments, where you need to have several years of experience. To put it another way, the rise of the internet has replaced manual labor with brain work─which pays way more. And Donald Trump wants to go backwards. That way, more Americans can stand in front of a machine all day.