President Trump Tuesday lauded improvement of domestic manufacturing production and honed in on new data coming from American automakers.

During a pre-Labor Day Cabinet meeting at the White House, Mr. Trump announced that domestic auto production has increased by 18,000 cars per month.

Mr. Trump said U.S. factories are “booming” compared to President Biden’s tenure. Mr. Trump said his tariff policy is already kicking in and will be “thrilling” when auto manufacturing numbers are released in two years, because the plants that automakers have pledged to build will be up and running in the U.S. by then.

“They’re all coming in because of tariffs,” Mr. Trump said.

“It’s up 18,000 because Ford, General Motors and a couple of others, Stellantis, they’re taking their existing plants, and, as quickly as they can, they’re adding on to them,” Mr. Trump said. “So when their plants open, because they’re building big, modern, beautiful auto plants…all they’ve done is try and utilize their space correctly as their big plants open up.”

Data from the Federal Reserve showed domestic auto production rose from 110,800 units in May to 114,700 in June. The president apparently was referring to an increase in July.

Mr. Trump also celebrated gains in the domestic steel and oil sectors, saying steel production in the U.S. is up by 100,000 tons a week and oil production has increased by more than 300,000 barrels a day.

“We just made a deal with U.S. Steel. As you know, we have an outside company come in, spend $17 billion on building new plants, new everything. It’s great, and … it stays right here in America. So we’re doing amazingly well on steel,” he said, attributing the production’s spike to the 50% tariff he had slapped on foreign steel.

The president previously promoted the benefits for U.S. workers from the U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel merger in May, saying the bulk of investment would occur in the next 14 months and generate $14 billion for the U.S. economy.

Mr. Biden had rejected Nippon Steel’s $15 billion bid to acquire U.S. Steel. He said the steel industry must remain in U.S. hands for national security reasons. Mr. Trump also believed that U.S. Steel should remain in American hands, a nod to blue-collar workers and voters in Pennsylvania and other states.

U.S. business activity rose in August, with manufacturing expanding at the fastest clip since 2022 on strengthening demand, Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, told Capital Brief.

Mr. Williamson said the data is consistent with the economy expanding at a 2.5% yearly rate, up from the average 1.3% expansion seen over the first two quarters of the year.

“Companies across both manufacturing and services are reporting stronger demand conditions, but are struggling to meet sales growth, causing backlogs of work to rise at a pace not seen since the pandemic-related capacity constraints recorded in early 2022,” he said.

• Tom Howell contributed to this report.

• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.