I ran the numbers. Trump cost us 274,000 jobs.

The bipartisan return to protectionism has been a costly mistake

Both Trump and Biden justified their tariffs in part by claiming they would bring back manufacturing jobs. That hasn’t happened. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

Over the last decade, protectionism has come back into vogue in the United States. Starting in 2018, both Republican and Democratic administrations have imposed new tariffs on U.S. imports; some trading partners have responded with tariffs on U.S. exports. The stated justification for this return to protectionism is to bolster manufacturing employment.

In theory, tariffs could increase domestic employment in protected industries if consumers substituted away from imported goods and toward domestically produced substitutes. In a September 2024 piece in The Atlantic, Oren Cass, the founder of right-populist think tank American Compass, made just this argument, claiming that critics of Trump’s tariff proposals “ignore even the possibility that higher import prices might encourage investment in domestic production” — production that “anchors local economies in a way that personal services cannot.”

But Cass’ implicit model of the economy assumes a fairly simple supply chain: Some products are made wholly in America, others are made wholly outside America, and consumers choose between the two.

That may have been common in the past, but it is increasingly less so today. These days, supply chains are multinational. The cars made by General Motors and Ford in Detroit include components shipped between Michigan and Ontario as many as four times before they are finished. So, in a world of complex supply chains, imposing new tariffs on (say) Canada would raise production costs for American automakers and reduce American employment.

That’s exactly what happened. From 2018 to 2024, import tariffs had a negative, statistically significant effect on manufacturing employment. Specifically, I estimate that tariffs reduced manufacturing employment by approximately 274,000 jobs over this period.

The bipartisan return to protectionism