The central promise behind President Trump’s border taxes was straightforward: slap tariffs on imports, make foreign goods more expensive, and watch factories spring up across America. The Wall Street Journal now reports the rain came, but the mushrooms didn’t.
US manufacturing employment has dropped by more than 200,000 positions since 2023. Tens of thousands of those losses came in 2025 alone, the very period when tariffs were supposed to be working their magic. Manufacturing payrolls shed another 8,000 jobs in June 2026.
The tariff math isn’t mathing
A 10% Section 122 duty on $1.2 trillion in imports took effect in February 2026. Roughly $120 billion in additional costs got layered onto the US economy through higher input prices for businesses that rely on imported materials, components, and finished goods.
The WSJ found scant evidence of reshoring benefits. Companies aren’t rushing to build new factories domestically. They’re just paying more for the same stuff they were buying before, then passing those costs along to consumers.
