While there are many who celebrate all of the announcements of countries to invest and companies to reshore into the United States, there are some stark reminders that while the talk is nice, cute and somewhat absurd, the track record is somewhat poor based on past performance.
As these pages wrote about and reminded everyone in March of this year, Foxconn was supposed to start building components for Apple iPhones and other devices. How did that work out for the United States and President Trump after the promises started flying in 2017?
From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2023:
What has Foxconn built since expanding to Wisconsin?
Not what it originally promised. The facility has changed from a Generation 10.5 to a Generation 6, which normally makes screens for phones, tablets and TVs. But so far, no screens have been made.
In fact it gets worse. Another major company, this one run by a Chinese billionaire promised to build a factory in Moraine, OH, and indeed he did. From Fortune Magazine, December 22, 2016 after Trump’s first election:
His company, Fuyao Glass, has invested over $1 billion stateside, according to the Post, the most significant move of which is opening its U.S. factory in the Ohio town of Moraine, a suburb of Dayton, back in October. The glass maker is re-purposing the town’s former General Motors assembly that had been standing empty since late 2008, as the Dayton Daily News reports.
So how did that turn out several years later? From the Dayton Daily News, April 3, 2025:
The 74-page complaint describes a law enforcement investigation that began in December 2019, saying multiple “business owners originally from China” who, on moving to Ohio, “became intricately involved with one another” created roughly 40 business entities that facilitated the “harboring, transportation, and employment of illegal aliens at various factories, and have developed a sophisticated money laundering organization.”
Promises made, promises, uh, kept.
Why does this author keep such a skeptical eye towards all of these paper promises and commitments produced by the Trump administration on an almost daily basis?
That is simple. During President Trump’s first term, as outlined in my earlier article from March linked above, his promises were for all types of investment and corporations to relocate to the US and spend billions upon billions reshoring and investing in the US worker.
However, the same government bureaucrats that measured economic activity during his first term in office are still doing so today and the myth that manufacturing is going to return to the United States and boom is just that; a fallacy, a false promise, or better yet if one would like, a golden unicorn.
The data does not lie as manufacturing business creation has been in a 20 year decline but instead of analyzing why, the average American has followed the lead of team MAGA by blaming illegals and unfair trade practices.
To be honest, this author had no idea the numbers were truly that bad but they are now lower than during the lowest ebb of the Great Financial Crisis and bouncing off pandemic lows. If the manufacturing business formation is that low, the next obvious step is to verify that against manufacturing employment levels.
And that data is even more depressing:
Even though new manufacturing techniques have improved, to see numbers like that is breathtaking. The sector has barely recovered from the outsourcing surge under President Obama and worse, is at levels unseen since just before World War II. Yikes indeed.
As the layoffs intensify in the American tech sector as the H1B insourcing accelerates along with the promises to build in America fall by the wayside due to costs, red tape, and expense, do not say one was not warned. The track record during Trump v1.0 from 2016-2020 should have provided a guide that companies and nations will say or promise anything to create the short term political satisfaction with the administration while pumping up equity prices on Wall Street.
May we live in fraudulent times, indeed.
