The president is not seeking reelection, but he has still praised the progress that manufacturing has made under his watch. And he said: generally truth.
While many of us were busy reading the barrage of political scandals that broke on Thursday, President Joe Biden was speaking at the Economic Club of Washington.
The president has received little media coverage since he gave up reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. His speech focused on cautious praise for the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts.
But Biden spent most of his 30-minute speech talking not about cutting interest rates but about his administration’s economic record, which of course included a reference to manufacturing. So let’s do a quick fact-check on some of his key manufacturing statements.
“During my term, over 700,000 manufacturing jobs were created. (Trump) lost 170,000 manufacturing jobs in four years.”
This is not wrong, but it is not correct either. In fact, it is misleading.
To be sure, manufacturing jobs have grown since Biden took office in January 2021. But data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that factory jobs across the economy have only added about 561,000 jobs — not zero, but not quite 700,000 either.
Meanwhile, data shows that during President Donald Trump’s term in office from January 2017 to January 2021, the U.S. economy grew by Hut 178,000 factory jobs. And it happened! But that didn’t happen in vain. The interregnum was the exact time the coronavirus pandemic hit and brought the global economy to a near halt. You can see this in this chart.
Manufacturing employment grew steadily under the Trump administration until the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020, then fell sharply. But that early growth rate was by no means the best in the world. Here’s the same graph, but over a longer period:
As you can see, the economy was adding factory jobs at roughly the same pace as it did under most of Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama’s eight years in office, only slowly recovering from the steep decline that began with the normalization of trade relations with China in 2000 and the lows after the 2009 financial crisis. But Obama didn’t tout his policies. “Bring back all the jobs”
“On our watch, factory construction is at an all-time high, up 210 percent. On our opponent’s watch, factory construction increased by just 2 percent.”
This one is a bit easier to interpret because factory construction is actually booming. The chart was created from data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.
This reflects the economic environment that has developed in the United States in recent years. Industrial Policy The bill passed by Congress and signed by President Biden was enacted to bring semiconductor chip and clean energy manufacturing to the United States, but $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending Federal “Buy America” requirements were updated and expanded, and private investment responded by building many greenfield factories to benefit from these moves and access procurement markets.
“You know, it takes time to build these factories,” Biden said of the spending. “But we’ve significantly increased the number of construction workers, and they’re making good wages. We’ve already created tens of thousands of construction jobs. The American people are saying, ‘Biden, where is this going?’ Because they expected this to happen overnight. We’ve got to build the factories first.”
“During my tenure, our trade deficit with China fell to its lowest level in a decade. During his tenure, our trade deficit with China soared.”
This is the last line we will look at. It’s also easy to find. That’s true in some ways. First, Biden isn’t talking about trade in goods and services here. Product – Physical products manufactured and sold. In 2023, the goods trade deficit with China will be the lowest in a decade. only It was $279 billion in 2019, $382 billion the year before, and $352 billion in 2021. For a variety of reasons, bilateral trade in goods between China and the United States is seriously imbalanced and is likely to remain so.
But for perspective, under Trump, the same annual deficit was just under $308 billion, reaching nearly $420 billion in 2018, the highest on record.
Just some food for thought! For those who want to watch it, here is the full speech:
