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manufacturing
'Business Continues to Be Severely Depressed': New Reports Paint Dark Picture of Trump Economy
"The addition of the derivative steel and aluminum tariffs in the middle of the month... was devastating," said one manufacturing executive.
Oct 01, 2025
Two reports released Wednesday paint an increasingly dark picture of the American economy under US President Donald Trump, matching predictions that his tax policy and chaotic tariffs would ultimately harm workers and put a drag on the nation's financial outlook.
First, processing firm ADP estimated in its latest monthly report that the US economy lost 32,000 jobs in September, with contractions in employment happening across multiple industries.
The leisure and hospitality industry was hardest hit, as ADP estimated it lost 19,000 jobs last month, followed by professional and business services, which lost an estimated 13,000 jobs, and financial activities, which lost an estimated 9,000 jobs.
Small businesses took the biggest hit, as they shed 40,000 employees on the month, ADP estimated.
Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said these latest numbers validate "what we've been seeing in the labor market, that US employers have been cautious with hiring."
The ADP report is not seen as reliable as the monthly jobs report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, although that report will not be released on Friday as previously scheduled due to the current shutdown of the federal government.
In addition to the ADP survey, the latest ISM Manufacturing PMI Report revealed that the "manufacturing sector contracted in September for the seventh consecutive month" amid uncertainty caused in large part by Trump's tariffs.
Comments made by executives in the new ISM survey point to a dire situation facing many US manufacturers.
"Business continues to be severely depressed," said one respondent. "Profits are down and extreme taxes (tariffs) are being shouldered by all companies in our space. We have increased price pressures both to our inputs and customer outputs as companies are starting to pass on tariffs via surcharges, raising prices up to 20 percent."
This executive, who works for a transportation equipment firm, added that "the addition of the derivative steel and aluminum tariffs in the middle of the month—with no announcement—was devastating."
An executive at an electrical equipment supplier, meanwhile, said that "customer orders are depressed for heavy machinery because tariffs are so impactful to high-end capital equipment." The executive said their company's revenue projections were flat for the rest of the year, with "no outlook to improve in 2026."
Another manufacturing executive simply said, "Steel tariffs are killing us."
This gloomy sentiment isn't just shared by business executives, but also US consumers. The Conference Board on Tuesday released its Consumer Confidence Index showing a "sharp deterioration in consumers’ views of the current economic situation" in the US.
Stephanie Guichard, senior economist at The Conference Board, noted that consumer confidence numbers are now the lowest they've been since April 2025, when Trump sent shockwaves through the economy by announcing his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs that he partially backed away from in the face of a cratering stock market.
"Consumers’ assessment of business conditions was much less positive than in recent months, while their appraisal of current job availability fell for the ninth straight month to reach a new multiyear low," Guichard explained. "This is consistent with the decline in job openings."
The Conference Board also found that consumers' short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions was once again below the threshold that "typically signals a recession ahead."
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Trump Tariff Regime Slammed as Manufacturing Jobs Crater
"The manufacturing sector is struggling more than the rest of the labor market under Trump's tariffs, and manufacturing workers' wage growth is stagnating."
Sep 05, 2025
US President Donald Trump's tariff policies, imposing levies as high as 50% on the United States' trading partners, have not proven compatible with his campaign promise to turn the US back into a "manufacturing powerhouse," as Friday's jobs report showed.
The overall analysis was grim, with the economy adding just 22,000 jobs last month, but manufacturing employment in particular has declined since Trump made his April 2 "Liberation Day" announcement of tariffs on countries including Canada and Mexico.
Since then, the president has introduced new rounds of tariffs on imports from countries he claims have treated the US unfairly, and all the while manufacturers have tightened their belts to cope with the higher cost of supplies and materials.
Overall manufacturing employment has plummeted by 42,000 jobs, while job openings and new hires have declined by 76,000 and 18,000, respectively, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP), which released a jobs report analysis titled Trump's Trade War Squeezes Middle-Class Manufacturing Employment on Friday.
"The manufacturing sector is struggling more than the rest of the labor market under Trump's tariffs, and manufacturing workers' wage growth is stagnating," said CAP.
Last month, the sector lost 12,000 jobs, while wages for manufacturing workers stagnated.
In line with other private employees, workers in the sector saw their wages go up just 10 cents from July, earning an average of $35.50 per hour.
"Despite Trump's claims that his policies will reignite the manufacturing industry in the United States, his policies have achieved the opposite," wrote policy analyst Kennedy Andara and economist Sara Estep at CAP.
The findings are in line with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' Texas Manufacturing Survey, which was taken from August 12-20 and found that 72% of manufacturing firms say the tariffs have had a negative impact on their business.
"The argument is: We're all meant to sacrifice a bit, so that tariffs can help rebuild American manufacturing. Let's ask American manufacturers whether they're helping," said University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers on social media, sharing a graph that showed the survey's findings.
As Philip Luck, a former deputy chief economist with the US State Department, told the CBC last month, Trump has been promising "millions and millions of jobs" will result from his tariff regime, but those promises are out of step with the reality of manufacturing in 2025.
"We do [manufacturing] now with very few workers, we do it in a very automated way," Luck told the CBC. "Even if we do increase manufacturing I don't know that we're going to increase jobs along with it."
The outlet noted that while the number of Americans employed in manufacturing peaked in 1979, the value of manufacturing production has continuously trended up since then.
Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, told the CBC that "no treasure trove of jobs" is likely to come out of Trump's tariffs.
The president "walked into an economy that was seeing the largest manufacturing production in American history," Hicks said. "That is really a testament to how productive American workers are, the quality of the technology, and capital investment in manufacturing."
But the rate of hiring at manufacturing firms is far below its 2024 level, said CAP, revealing the negative impact of Trump's tariff regime.
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed to nearly 800 workers who lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector this week, including 120 whose company's sawmill closed in Darlington, South Carolina; 101 who worked at an electronics assembly plant for Intervala in Manchester, New Hampshire; and 170 whose sawmill positions were eliminated in Estill, South Carolina.
The US Supreme Court is expected to soon review Trump's tariffs after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled last week that many of them are illegal.
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Congressional Report Warns Trump Tariffs Could Stymie US Manufacturing for 'Years to Come'
Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee said that "continued uncertainty" caused by the president's policies could reduce manufacturing investments by nearly half a trillion dollars by the end of this decade.
Aug 18, 2025
US President Donald Trump's tariff whiplash has already harmed domestic manufacturing and could continue to do so through at least the end of this decade to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars, a report published Monday by congressional Democrats on a key economic committee warned.
The Joint Economic Committee (JEC)-Minority said that recent data belied Trump's claim that his global trade war would boost domestic manufacturing, pointing to the 37,000 manufacturing jobs lost since the president announced his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April.
"Hiring in the manufacturing sector has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade," the Democrats on the committee wrote. "In addition, many experts have noted that in and of itself, the uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."
"Based on both US business investment projections and economic analyses of the UK in the aftermath of Brexit, the Joint Economic Committee-Minority calculates that a similarly prolonged period of uncertainty in the US could result in an average of 13% less manufacturing investment per year, amounting to approximately $490 billion in foregone investment by 2029," the report states.
"The uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."
"Although businesses have received additional clarity on reciprocal tariff rates in recent days, uncertainty over outstanding negotiations is likely to continue to delay long-term investments and pricing decisions," the publication adds. "Furthermore, even if the uncertainty about the US economy were to end tomorrow, evidence suggests that the uncertainty that businesses have already faced in recent months would still have long-term consequences for the manufacturing sector."
According to the JEC Democrats, the Trump administration has made nearly 100 different tariff policy decisions since April—"including threats, delays, and reversals"—creating uncertainty and insecurity in markets and economies around the world. It's not just manufacturing and markets—economic data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that businesses in some sectors are passing the costs of Trump's tariffs on to consumers.
As the new JEC minority report notes:
As independent research has shown, businesses are less likely to make long-term investments when they face high uncertainty about future policies and economic conditions. For manufacturers, decisions to expand production—which often entail major, irreversible investments in equipment and new facilities that typically take years to complete—require an especially high degree of confidence that these expenses will pay off. This barrier, along with other factors, makes manufacturing the sector most likely to see its growth affected by trade policy uncertainty, as noted recently by analysts at Goldman Sachs.
"Strengthening American manufacturing is critical to the future of our economy and our national security," Joint Economic Committee Ranking Member Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a statement Monday. "While President Trump promised that he would expand our manufacturing sector, this report shows that, instead, the chaos and uncertainty created by his tariffs has placed a burden on American manufacturers that could weigh our country down for years to come."
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