The varied issues facing American manufacturing

Washington Post

28-05-2025

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In today's edition … King Charles III goes to the mat for Canada … Senate Democrats preview their Medicaid messaging … Sen. Tuberville looks for an exit … but first …
President Donald Trump is pressing to invigorate manufacturing in the United States.
He said Sunday that his trade policy is aimed at making 'big things' in the U.S. again, not just T-shirts and sneakers. 'We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships,' Trump said. To that end, last month, Trump signed an executive order aimed at encouraging Americans to go into high-skilled trade jobs.
According to experts and recent examinations of the American labor market, that may not be enough.
There are major issues facing American manufacturing, and yes, those issues include cheaper labor abroad and trade barriers in other countries, two problems Trump is trying to address through tariffs.
But his trade policy largely ignores key domestic issues: Widespread job openings that companies are struggling to fill and an aging workforce with millions set to retire over the next decade. The declining size of the American workforce is further exacerbated by the president's efforts to decrease immigration, particularly in skilled-labor professions.
'This gets into an immigration debate. … We'll have students from Asia come in to study, but they can't stay. And so we educate them at taxpayer expense, and then they go back to our competition,' Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) recently told us at a Washington Post Live event on manufacturing. 'I had this bill several years ago. If you get a PhD in high-skilled engineering, you get a green card. … I'm not sure how others in the administration may view that now.'
There were about 450,000 open manufacturing jobs in March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, positions that companies are struggling to fill. And a study last year by the Manufacturing Institute — a nonprofit workforce development and education affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers — and Deloitte found that recruiting and retaining workers was the most pressing issue for top manufacturing companies.
'The U.S. manufacturing industry could see a net need for as many as 3.8 million jobs between 2024 and 2033 as significant investment continues to drive growth,' read the report. 'Without significant changes, more than 5 in 10 or 1.9 million of these jobs could go unfilled if workforce challenges are not addressed through 2033.'
Central to that problem is age. The average age of a manufacturing worker is 44.3 years, older than the 42-year-old average age of all workers in America, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 8 percent of manufacturing workers are under 25 years old. The Census Bureau also found in 2020 that 'nearly one-fourth of the manufacturing workforce is age 55 or older.' And surveys show that few younger Americans are interested in factory work.
To Carolyn Lee, president of the Manufacturing Institute, this is an issue of perception vs. reality.
'The age of the manufacturing workforce has long been a challenge for us,' Lee said. 'People don't understand what manufacturing is all about today. They have this image of something they have seen on television or in the movies. So there is this disconnect between understanding the reality of the sector and what the potential of those jobs are and what people believe them to be. Perception is one of our biggest gaps.'
This issue is a political football in nearly every presidential campaign. As states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have grown in political relevance, so too has the issue of manufacturing, with presidential candidates often sparring over who will be better for the trades.
A 'manufacturing renaissance' was the centerpiece of Trump's economic policy during his 2024 run. 'You will see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to right here in Georgia,' Trump told an audience in that state months before the election.
But analysts at Wells Fargo recently found that 'a meaningful increase in factory jobs does not appear likely in the foreseeable future,' because just to bring the industry back to its high point of around 1980, it will cost 'at a minimum $2.9 trillion in net new capital investment.'
'There is no one lever that is going to fix all the things that ails us when it comes to workforce development,' Lee said. 'Most people think of manufacturing that you are standing on an assembly line and doing a single manual function and that is 40 years of your career. And that is far from the truth. That is why we need to tell the story of manufacturing jobs.'
Senate Democrats are looking to make the sweeping spending bill passed by the House a political cudgel, launching a digital ad campaign today that ties Senate Republicans to the House bill that would cut Medicaid spending and lock in tax cuts for higher earners.
The 60-second digital spot — titled 'Devastating' — will run on Meta platforms and a range of digital TV channels. It shows a simple Google search asking, 'What's happening with the Republican budget,' followed by news reports on what the bill's Medicaid cuts would mean for states and how taxes would go down for top earners. 'The Republican budget is wrong for American families,' a text block reads at the end of the spot.
The ad highlights how the months-long work by the House will probably become a central point of Democratic messaging in the 2026 midterms, whether or not the Senate changes the bill in the coming weeks.
'Under the leadership of Senate Republicans, millions of people are at risk of losing their health insurance — and voters will hold them accountable for it at the ballot box in 2026,' committee spokeswoman Maeve Coyle said.
In other campaign news: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) is officially running for governor after weeks of anticipation. He had been hinting at a run but made it official during an interview on Fox News yesterday.
'I'm a football coach. I'm a leader. I'm a builder. I'm a recruiter, and we're going to grow Alabama,' Tuberville said. 'We're going to bring manufacturing to this state. We're going to stop this illegal immigration.'
Tuberville is a first-term senator who was elected in 2020 after a career coaching at Auburn University, taking that persona onto Capitol Hill, where he's affectionately called 'coach.' Tuberville would be a formidable candidate in a Republican primary. He's closely aligned with Trump, and successfully defeated former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who previously held the seat, in the 2020 Republican primary.
Elon Musk weighed in on Republicans' catchall legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He doesn't seem pleased.
The billionaire tasked with slashing federal spending was 'disappointed' to see the bill add to the federal deficit, he said in an interview with 'CBS Sunday Morning' airing this weekend. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill could add $2.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Musk said the bill 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.'
'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion,' Musk said.
The bill passed the House last week, and the Senate will take it up when it returns to Washington next week. Some deficit hawks in the Senate expressed concerns similar to Musk's, but Republicans are divided, with others demanding protections for clean energy tax cuts and social spending programs.
Britain's King Charles III, who is also Canada's king, visited Ottawa yesterday, giving the first speech to Parliament from a Canadian monarch in nearly 50 years. It was a stern assertion of Canada's sovereignty and widely seen as a rebuke to Trump's musings about making the country the 51st state.
'Democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination and freedom are values Canadians hold dear and ones which the government is determined to protect,' Charles said in a speech mixing English and French and opening with an acknowledgment. 'The system of open global trade that, while not perfect, has helped to deliver prosperity for Canadians for decades is changing. Canada's relationship with partners is also changing.'
Charles spent much of the speech, which was written by Canada's government, stressing the country's need to navigate a changing world — including alliances that it may have historically taken for granted. He largely avoided mentioning Trump, but he did say the president had productive conversations to define a 'new economy and security relationship' with Prime Minister Mark Carney.
'All Canadians can give themselves far more than any foreign power on any continent can ever take away,' Charles said.
Amanda Coletta has more from Toronto.
SpotlightPA (Pennsylvania): Pennsylvania is the last state in the nation to elect poll workers, leading officials to worry that they are short thousands of candidates for the positions.
County17 (Gillette, Wyoming): There is an odd, yet public, conflict brewing between Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R). Gordon began publishing a newsletter Friday, alleging that Gray was spreading misinformation that needed to be debunked. 'The record needs to be set straight,' Gordon wrote.
The Boston Globe: Tom Morello did not mince his words on Trump during a performance this weekend in Boston, where the Rage Against the Machine guitarist called for a revolution and shouted out Harvard and Bruce Springsteen, both subjects of Trump's ire.
Colorado Public Radio: NPR and some of its Colorado partners sued the Trump administration over an executive order gutting funding for the public radio networks. The networks say Trump is violating their First Amendment rights in a politically motivated attack.
Yesterday, we wrote about how clean energy tax credits created under President Joe Biden could get nixed in Republicans' mammoth tax and spending cuts bill. The tax credits were the biggest investment in combating climate change in history and the cornerstone of Democrats' 2022 climate bill.
Paul Grabowski of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote back emphasizing that the federal government also has generous tax incentives for oil and gas production, benefiting the coal, oil and gas industries with more than $12 billion from 2022 to 2026, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center.
That's a great point — the clean energy tax credits weren't created in a vacuum and had precedent with federal assistance for fossil fuel production.
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