President Donald Trump is zigging and zagging on tariffs — They’re on! They’re off! Exceptions! No exceptions! — but he’s been steadily consistent on one thing: He wants to restore America’s manufacturing base.
That’s a goal that has eluded three previous administrations — Barack Obama, Trump in his first term and Joe Biden — despite very different policies on how to do that. Manufacturing jobs peaked under Jimmy Carter in June 1979, but fell most sharply under George W. Bush in the early 2000s — a fall that had more to do with the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization than it did with Bush’s policies. That freefall of manufacturing jobs bottomed out in February 2010, about a year into Obama’s first term, but hasn’t changed much since, which raises the question: Can any one president’s policies change these global trends?
There’s little political disagreement that the nation should have a strong manufacturing base in certain sectors — steels, autos, microchips and pharmaceuticals, among them. The Democratic response during Biden’s term was the CHIPS+Science Act (of which Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., was a key author) that aimed to promote the “re-shoring” of the semiconductor industry that makes microchips. Trump has trashed that law and is going the tariff route. Someday, we may know who was right.
This isn’t about tariffs, though, at least not directly. Instead, the goal today is to look at market trends: What manufacturing jobs are growing? Which ones can the United States realistically grow, and which ones can’t we? And, of course, what does any of that mean for Southwest and Southside Virginia, which was once Virginia’s industrial heartland?
1. Some manufacturing jobs simply aren’t coming back to the U.S.
It’s fashionable in some quarters to blame corporate greed or “bad” trade deals for American manufacturing jobs going overseas, but one person’s definition of greed might be another’s definition of a favorable rate of return on investment. We pay too little attention to the real culprit: American consumers, who like inexpensive goods. We lost jobs because it was — and is — cheaper to produce some things overseas. Marketplace, the National Public Radio show, reports the average salary of workers in a Chinese shoe factory is less than $7,700 a year. Unless Americans want to pay a lot more for their shoes, Lynchburg is never going to be a shoe capital again. Ditto Danville with textiles or Martinsville with furniture. You can call this globalization, or you can call this basic economics, but this is simply the marketplace. American workers are competing with workers all over the world, so the question becomes, what can we do so well that Americans are willing to pay for the higher labor costs? It probably won’t be cellphones. An Apple iPhone currently costs about $1,000. It’s been widely estimated that if Apple made its phones in the United States, the cost would be $3,500. Nonetheless, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has enthused over the prospect: “Remember the armies of millions of millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones? That kind of thing is going to come to America!”
2. The fastest-growing job fields aren’t in manufacturing
The World Economic Forum has published a list of the 15 fastest-growing job fields around the world. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a list of what it expects to be the 20 fastest-growing fields in the U.S. over the coming decades. The lists differed, but they shared one thing in common: Those fields aren’t in manufacturing. Only one job sector on the World Economic Forum list was related to manufacturing. None on the Bureau of Labor Statistics list were. Instead, those lists are dominated by things such as data scientists and information security analysts.
Why are there so few manufacturing jobs on the list? The economy is changing, and many manufacturing jobs that once required human labor are now being automated. Demographics will drive that even more — declining birth rates mean a smaller labor pool.
A fast-growing job field, though, isn’t the same thing as a field with a lot of jobs available. This is one of those statistical things. Example: If Major League Baseball were to add more teams (as it says it wants to do), that would lead to a big jump in the number of professional baseball players in percentage terms but unless you can consistently throw a fast ball in the 90s, don’t bet on that being your new career. With that in mind, let’s look at where lots of jobs are being created, and where they’re not.
3. Not many manufacturing sectors are growing jobs
Oxford Economics has produced a more relevant list for us: the industry sectors creating the most manufacturing jobs. That firm’s 2024 report (based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data) shows that only five industry sectors had higher-than-average job growth. Now, if you’re Trump, perhaps you might want to argue that all the other sectors ought to be growing faster. Or maybe the marketplace is telling Trump something he doesn’t want to hear.
Those five high-growth manufacturing fields from 2019-2023: pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, automobiles, aerospace, and computers and electronics (which includes semiconductors), in that order. Oxford Economics projects that all five fields will continue to grow: “Pharmaceuticals will benefit from the aging of the population and demand for weight-loss drugs. Computers and electronics will reap gains from the CHIPS Act and strong supply-chain growth from tech and AI. Automobiles will see mixed but continued demand for EVs in the future as will aerospace from the lure of space travel. Finally, food and beverage manufacturing will benefit from population growth and the recovery in the leisure and hospitality sector.”
4. Growth in pharmaceutical jobs should help the Richmond-Petersburg area. Will tariffs help, though?
That region has been positioning itself as a center for pharmaceuticals and won one of the “tech hub” designations awarded by the Biden administration. That’s supposed to bring millions in federal investment. We’ll see whether the Trump administration tries to turn off that faucet. Trump has shown particular interest in imposing tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals as a way to boost domestic manufacturing of drugs, but the website Politico recently published a lengthy explanation headlined “Trump says pharma tariffs will entice back drug production. They won’t.” The short version: It takes a long time and a lot of money to set up a drug-making factory even in the best of times. Trump’s tariffs on steel will drive up construction costs. Politico quotes numerous people in the industry saying that pharmaceutical companies aren’t going to move quickly; some may just try to wait Trump out.
5. Many of these high-growth manufacturing sectors are ones that Trump has targeted for reshoring
In many ways, Trump is a 19th-century president trying to manage a 21st-century economy — he has embraced the high-tariff policies of William McKinley, for instance. However, many of the sectors that he and his advisers have talked about most are the ones with the most potential for jobs. Of the top five fields Oxford Economics identified, the only one I haven’t heard Trump talk about is food and beverage manufacturing, so he may not be as 19th-century-minded as some critics think. He’s got his eyes on the ones that seem to have the most potential.
However …
6. The forces driving job growth in some of these sectors aren’t ones that Trump likes
Notice that Oxford Economics cites the CHIPS Act as a major driver behind the growth of electronics-related jobs, and electric vehicles as a major driver behind the growth of auto jobs. Trump seems to have softened some on electric vehicles lately (maybe that’s the Elon Musk factor), but in general, what’s driving many manufacturing-related jobs these days is the transition to clean energy. This is, in effect, the Green New Deal — the premise that the energy transition can be good for the economy.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that, in percentage terms, the fastest-growing jobs in the country are for wind energy technicians, at $61,770 a year. Trump, though, has ordered a halt to all offshore wind projects that aren’t already under development. The second fastest-growing job? Solar panel installers, at $48,800 a year. When Trump issued his executive orders on energy, he gave priority to fossil fuels and nuclear, with no mention of wind or solar. In effect, a president elected on a platform of reviving the nation’s economy has just kneecapped the two fastest-growing types of jobs.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen the emergence of a “battery belt” in the Southeast, as companies set up shop to build the batteries that can store energy for use in electric vehicles and other types of electronics. However, The Washington Post recently reported that so far this year, more than $7.7 billion worth of clean energy manufacturing projects in the United States have been canceled as the Trump administration pulls the plug on federal grants. It’s certainly fair to argue about to what degree the federal government should jumpstart a clean energy manufacturing industry, but for a president who has specifically said he wants to restore American manufacturing, it seems odd to undermine a fast-growing manufacturing sector.
For now, Virginia seems untouched by this. Virginia had fallen outside that “battery belt” until Microporous announced in November that it will build a 2,100-job plant in Pittsylvania County. Microporous says that project is still on — even though there’s still no word on a promised federal grant. However, there are potential jobs that might not happen: Southwest Virginia had been looking to position itself as a place for manufacturing jobs related to a wind energy supply chain. If offshore wind doesn’t happen under Trump, neither will those wind-related manufacturing jobs. While most solar panels are made overseas, most wind-energy components are made domestically, according to USA Facts. Wind energy is both domestic energy and domestic manufacturing.
7. Research and development drives manufacturing, but research funding is being cut
Some of Trump’s goals seem at odds with one another. Many economic innovations grow out of university labs. That’s where the internet comes from (it was birthed by a defense-related contract). Just look at Virginia Tech, where there’s research going on in lots of different fields — from biotech at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute to automated vehicles at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Ultimately, the goal there is to turn research findings into products that can be manufactured. You’d think a nation that wants to strengthen its manufacturing base would be increasing its research funding, not decreasing it.
The United States still spends more on research and development than any other country in the world, but China is closing in on us fast. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, China has increased its research and development spending nearly sixfold since 2007. Then it ranked fourth behind the U.S., the European Union and Japan. Now it’s a close second to the United States, and the trendlines suggest China will soon surpass the U.S. Tariffs won’t fix that.
Virginia Tech President Tim Sands recently announced that “of Virginia Tech’s 2,315 active federal awards, 25 have been terminated and 12 are under full or partial stop-work orders, totaling $21.2 million or 1.3 percent of Virginia Tech’s $1.6 billion federal sponsored research portfolio.”
How many of those might have led to some technological breakthrough that would create the manufacturing jobs of the future? Like many things, we just don’t know.
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