According to a review by American Ledger, a recent Trump campaign ad touts the return of 73,000 manufacturing jobs during Trump’s time in office but references a USA Today article that cites data from 2010-2018, an 8 year period that consists of 6 years of the Obama-Biden administration and only 2 years of Trump. Several of the companies mentioned in the article have actually closed manufacturing plants during President Trump’s time in office and are outsourcing jobs as a direct result of Trump’s trade and economic policies.

The first paragraph of the USA Today article mentions that the iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson plans to shift manufacturing overseas to avoid retaliatory tariffs directly in response to Trump’s tariffs. Trump publicly supported a boycott of Harley-Davidson after they moved their manufacturing overseas. Overall, the article mentions 16 companies that brought jobs back to America from 2010-2018, though several factories mentioned in the article returned to the U.S. during the Obama-Biden administration.

Since the article was published in 2018, multiple companies credited for bringing jobs back to the U.S. have made plans or already outsourced jobs in 2018, 2019, or 2020, all years that President Trump has been in office.

• The first paragraph of the USA Today article noted that Harley Davidson planned to shift manufacturing overseas to avoid retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s tariffs. Harley-Davidson’s 2019 sales were hurt by Trump’s tariffs. Trump publicly supported a boycott of Harley-Davidson after they moved manufacturing overseas.
• The iconic American firm General Electric outsourced hundreds of jobs from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Canada in 2017, moved their entire turbine manufacturing division from upstate New York to Poland, and decided to cut hundreds of jobs in Ohio and 13,000 across the country in the wake of the COVID-19.
• Additionally, Intel shifted production of its computer chips to China because of the United States’ disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, raising national security concerns from lawmakers about the backend security of Americans’ technological devices.
• And American automotive giant Ford moved the entire production of their Ford Focus sedan to China in 2019, and observers considered it a casualty of Trump’s trade war.

President Trump’s time in office has seen a marked increase in outsourcing by iconic American companies as a direct consequence of his trade war and mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump is up for reelection in November.