OPINION:
As the Trump economy begins to boom even as inflation moderates, Democrats and the anti-Trump media are desperate for a spin that might discredit Trumponomics.
Their latest Hail Mary: pushing a counterfactual narrative that President Trump’s tariffs are hurting, rather than stimulating, a manufacturing revival for blue-collar America.
The latest manufacturing data obliterates that lie.
In January, the ISM Manufacturing Index jumped 4.7 points to 52.6. That wasn’t just an estimate beat; it was a blowout, and an important one.
The ISM Manufacturing Index is the most widely followed survey of factory activity worldwide. When it moves above 50, the manufacturing economy is expanding.
When it jumps nearly 5 points in a single month to decisively push past 50, something fundamental has changed.
That “something” is Trumponomics finally overpowering the wreckage left behind by Bidenomics. The 52.6 reading marks the first decisive return to expansion since August 2022, ending a manufacturing downturn that dominated the latter half of the Biden presidency.
Curiously, although the ISM manufacturing index is generally regarded as a leading indicator, it has been late to the Trump manufacturing party this time. Indeed, throughout 2025, numerous other hard data had already been flashing green.
To wit, the S&P Manufacturing PMI has repeatedly been showing expansion. Federal Reserve industrial production has been rising. Manufacturing productivity has surged at a 3.7% annual rate. Durable goods manufacturing alone contributed roughly half a percentage point (about 12%) of overall growth in gross domestic product in the third quarter.
For some reason, the ISM survey simply took longer to reflect that reality.
These green manufacturing shoots from Trumponomics capture exactly the pattern one would expect in the early stages of a genuine manufacturing renaissance. Yet Democrats and their media allies insist on pretending that tariffs somehow “destroy manufacturing jobs.”
This sophistry ignores how manufacturing jobs are actually created and how long the process takes. It is not a case of “If you build the factories, the jobs immediately come.” That is never how industrial economics has worked.
The arc is longer — and unmistakable.
In Trumponomics, it begins with Mr. Trump’s protective reciprocal tariffs and the pro-investment provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, especially 100% expensing for new factories and equipment. Together, these policies change the domestic investment and onshoring calculus. They make it more profitable to build in America than to offshore production to foreign mercantilist regimes that cheat, subsidize and dump.
Once Trumponomics shifts that calculus, capital investment accelerates.
That is precisely what we’re now seeing. Imports of capital goods and factory equipment surged in 2025 as companies rushed to retool, expand and reshore production capacity in the United States. That capital inflow is the down payment on domestic production. You cannot run new factories without first importing or building the machines that go inside them.
From there, the next phase follows naturally: a construction boom.
Factories do not materialize overnight. They take 12 to 18 months (often up to 36 months) to permit, finance and build. During that period, the jobs that appear first are construction jobs: openings for electricians, steelworkers, concrete crews, equipment installers and engineers. Those are good, middle-class jobs, often union jobs, that show up well before the first assembly line is switched on.
Only after the factories are built do the permanent manufacturing jobs arrive in force.
This timing reality is what the fake news deliberately ignores. They look at today’s payroll snapshot and declare failure while refusing to acknowledge that Mr. Trump has only just restarted an industrial machine that the Democrats spent decades dismantling.
It took roughly 30 years of bad trade deals — NAFTA, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and systematic foreign cheating — for America’s manufacturing base to be hollowed out. Entire supply chains were offshored. Communities were gutted. Skills were lost.
Mr. Trump can reverse that damage, but not overnight.
What he can do (and is doing) is restore the conditions that make manufacturing revival inevitable: protection from predatory imports, full expensing to slash the cost of domestic investment, deregulation to free industry from bureaucratic shackles, and cheap, abundant American energy to power the plants once they come online.
Meanwhile, the fake news can keep spinning fairy tales about tariffs. The data — and the factories — are moving in the opposite direction.
Trust in Trump. Elections matter.
• Peter Navarro is the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. www.peternavarro.com
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