American manufacturing is on the rebound, and that good news could hardly come at a better time for President Donald Trump, as Republicans gird themselves for the midterm elections just two months from now.

Not that manufacturing is the only sector that’s on a hiring spree — businesses across the board added 162,000 new jobs in August.

Even The New York Times calls the latest employment numbers “zesty.” 

The paper quoted T. Rowe Price’s chief U.S. economist, Blerina Uruci, saying: “It’s a very good report; I can’t emphasize that enough. And it perhaps shows that financial conditions more broadly are not that tight.”

The workforce participation rate rose as well — which matters because people who drop out of the labor force are invisible in unemployment rates that only count those who are looking for work.

This economy is pulling Americans who’d given up hope off the sidelines and putting them to work.

That’s a success not only for Trump’s economic policy but for his immigration crackdown as well — it’s no longer so easy for companies to abandon Americans by hiring foreign workers instead.

Establishment economists predicted none of this: 

They were certain Trump’s tariffs would be catastrophic and American industry would contract with constant infusions of foreign labor.

Relentless efforts to stop the president’s economic agenda in the courts created uncertainty that’s bad for business:

Companies have to make plans based on a predictable environment of taxation and regulation. If nobody knows whether tariffs will remain in place or not, nobody can afford to make long-range decisions about reshoring jobs and buying from American suppliers instead of sources overseas.

That’s what the president’s foes — who want maximum economic globalization — were counting on.

Voters chose Trump’s agenda over the alternatives in 2024, when they sent him back to the White House with full Republican control of Congress.

But losing an election doesn’t matter if you can use lawfare in the courts to sabotage implementation of what the voters asked for.

Yet all the lawfare of the past year hasn’t stopped the America First employment agenda from succeeding. 

The results have been especially impressive in manufacturing, where the latest numbers show the biggest growth coming from jobs that make long-lasting products.

As Peter Navarro, who served as director of Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, notes in a column for RealClearMarkets, “Manufacturing employment rose by 16,000 in August, with nearly all of that gain coming from durable-goods manufacturing, which added 15,000 jobs.”

Overall, “manufacturing employment is up 58,000” jobs this year, “driven by a 94,000-job gain in durable goods.”

It’s important to know the background here: Globalization’s advocates treat the disappearance of America’s manufacturing jobs as an inevitability. They say technological advances will destroy more of those jobs than free trade does.

But they draw the wrong conclusion from technology’s impact on employment: It’s (SET ITAL)because(END ITAL) many jobs will be lost to automation that we shouldn’t undercut the rest of our manufacturing workforce by adopting trade policies that exacerbate job losses.

The profits to be had from simply moving a factory from America to a foreign country where labor is cheaper are, as economists know, “arbitrage” gains — which disappear as wages equalize over time.

As wages rise in the rest of the world, the disadvantage that higher-wage American workers have faced in competing with them starts to fade away.

Over time, this makes the case for returning manufacturing to America steadily stronger.

But first, our manufacturing base had to survive peak globalization — and if not for Trump, the policies that were accelerating the loss of our country’s manufacturing jobs would never have stopped.

What Trump and the GOP are achieving with their trade and jobs policies shouldn’t be judged from a baseline of zero — the gains have to be compared to how big the (SET ITAL)losses(END ITAL) would have been without this new approach.

Coming out of the Biden years in January 2025, America had shed 199,000 manufacturing jobs in just the preceding 16 months, according to industry analyst Alan Tonelson.

Biden left manufacturing in a deepening hole Trump has had to pull the sector out of.

And he’s doing it — first slowing the job losses that had been accumulating for years, and now increasing manufacturing employment for each of the past several months. 

In just about eight weeks, voters across the country are going to pass judgment on Republican control of Congress.

Trump won’t be on the ballot Nov. 3, but jobs will be — especially those in manufacturing.

They’ll be lost if a Democratic Congress adds its power to the campaign in the courts that’s trying to drag America back to the age of offshoring.

There’s still money to be made by arbitraging away American jobs — or importing a cheaper workforce into our own country.

Voters haven’t changed their minds about immigration or manufacturing, however: They want what Trump promised, and what the latest figures show he’s delivering.

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