One perspective: U.S. manufacturing

Not all has been exemplary

Excerpt: "By putting eye-popping tariffs on imports, President Trump hopes to bring manufacturing back home. What his administration overlooks is U.S. industries’ culpability in the current state of affairs.

It’s an open question whether American companies can change course.

President Reagan tried. His administration used a variety of tactics in the 1980s to restrict steel and auto imports, giving U.S. manufacturers time to remake themselves in the face of a formidable foreign onslaught.

But domestic manufacturers failed to rise to the occasion and failed miserably, as I witnessed as a reporter for the Journal covering America’s industrial belt at its most pivotal moment of decline.

That failure foreshadowed what has become a national concern today: our extraordinarily heavy reliance on manufacturing offshore in industries critical to our national security and economy. Last year, steel, autos, machinery, electrical equipment and pharmaceuticals together accounted for 77.5% of the country’s $1.2 trillion trade deficit. Take the auto industry: Only about half of new cars sold in the U.S. in 2024 were manufactured locally, and many of these had imported parts.

In the 1980s, it was a common refrain that if General Motors—America’s largest industrial enterprise—sneezed, the rest of the country caught a cold. Steel and a host of other industries depended on the car industry’s well-being. So did many U.S. workers and consumers. But in the face of growing foreign threats, American manufacturers seemed in denial.

Seemingly thinking they could never be knocked off their pedestals, they changed little about how they fundamentally operated."