Macho men implode in Trump’s MAGA economy

President Donald Trump promised when he ran for reelection in 2024 that he would revitalize American jobs, particularly in traditionally masculine industries like manufacturing. Yet according to a recent report by a business journalist, that's not what's happening.

"The White House promised a manufacturing renaissance,” wrote Fortune business editor Nick Lichtenberg on Tuesday. “Instead, the factory floor keeps shrinking."

The journalist further elaborated that "the blue-collar job market has been slowing for more than a year, with jobs in manufacturing and construction racking up roughly 150,000 net losses on an annual basis as of March… During Trump's first year back in the White House, the manufacturing sector alone shed 108,000 jobs—even as the administration touted a coming 'manufacturing boom.'"

Lichtenberg also cited another piece of journalism, pointing out that Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at accounting firm RSM, told the New York Times’ Talmon Joseph Smith that “there are jobs available. However, at this moment, the demand for blue-collar labor is insufficient to match the supply."

As he later wrote, "The men most hurt by the MAGA economy's broken promises are the same ones most culturally resistant to the jobs actually on offer."

His conclusion: "The irony is sharp,” Lichtenberg wrote. “The same working-class men the MAGA economy promised to rescue are sitting out a hiring boom in the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy because those jobs are considered women's work. Meanwhile, the factories they're waiting to return to keep shedding workers."

Lichtenberg is not alone among financial experts to say that Trump’s pro-manufacturing policies have not simulated manufacturing jobs.

“If the economy was 'dead' in 2024, there's no evidence Mr. Trump's tariffs have brought it back to life,” former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Donald J. Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote for The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. As they pointed out, “most economists predicted that the economy's performance would be negatively affected. Thus far data overwhelmingly indicate that is what has happened."

They later added, "The world isn't deglobalizing. It's reglobalizing around partners who commit to rules rather than those who wield tariffs like a club." The main data points reinforce their observations such as in how "in 2025 the pace of losing manufacturing jobs accelerated to 1.2%, faster than the decline in 2024 of 0.7%. In 2017 manufacturing jobs actually increased by 0.7%."

They concluded, "Tariffs thus divert capital and labor away from uses that would have yielded higher returns to capital and higher wages for workers."

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