Americans are enthusiastically celebrating the 250th anniversary of independence from the shackles of British rule. As you can read in the Declaration of Independence, Americans asserted their rights to make more of their own choices using more of their own resources. It’s time to reaffirm that assertion, that right to have maximum control over one’s own domain.
In one modern context, this increased control of resources would come from further lowering tariffs.
Conservatives continue to praise the Trump-Vance Administration’s recent reduction from 25% to 15% of the tariff on some aluminum, steel, and copper, plus products made from them. Since, by design, tariffs raise costs by taxing imported items that American businesses need for their operations and sales, any tariff reduction is good news for American businesses and consumers.
Americans need more good news.
Thanks to policies implemented during the Trump-Pence Administration, America was just starting to polish the tarnish off the Rust Belt's aging manufacturing infrastructure—building factories, increasing local employment in the manufacturing sector, and proving that American-made is synonymous with world-class. However, if lingering tariff policy continues to threaten the bottom line of domestic manufacturers, the Rust Belt will continue to rust away.
Sadly, the U.S. has lost 4.5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. Yet American manufacturing capacity has nonetheless expanded for 51 consecutive months through early 2026, demonstrating that American manufacturing is poised to take off, but a true manufacturing renaissance is inhibited by tariff and trade policy.
American history proves that manufacturing high-quality, state-of-the-art goods domestically is indeed feasible—and benefits consumers and businesses. However, current trade policy on finished-good production and on imports of raw materials/upstream components does not facilitate onshoring or investment to continue building domestic capacity.
Tariffs on the key metals noted above and on many products made from them have been modified at least four times since February 2025, creating the policy whiplash that manufacturers continually cite as their single biggest barrier to committing to domestic investment. 86% of manufacturers cite rising input costs as their primary tariff impact, which is understandable, since raw material prices rose an average of 5.4% in 2025 and are projected to rise another 4.4% in 2026.
Regrettably, manufacturing employment has declined 1% since “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, and new factory construction applications fell 39% year-over-year by May 2025 and still haven't plateaued. A June 2026 Kearney report found that tariffs “didn't seem to drive significant near-term increases in reshoring,” with imports shifting from China to Vietnam, Malaysia, and India, instead of returning or moving to the United States.
Tariffs designed to protect American industry keep raising the cost of American production (and of course consumption). Frequent, unpredictable tariff policy modifications make it nearly impossible for manufacturers to plan around their shifting costs.
The home appliance sector is a useful lens on how tariffs ripple through American manufacturing. The industry generates roughly $198 billion in economic output across the U.S. economy and directly employs more than 377,000 American workers, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM). AHAM, whose members have long supported free and fair trade, warns that tariffs on appliance components and on the imported steel and aluminum that domestic manufacturers rely on function as taxes that raise manufacturers' costs, resulting in an increased appliance costs of 8-15% year-over-year falling directly on consumers. The group also cautions that such tariffs can cost American manufacturing jobs and divert company resources away from innovation.
The bind is especially counterproductive for manufacturers trying to expand here. A company that wants to build or grow a domestic plant often must first import specialized production equipment that simply isn't made in the U.S.—and that equipment is hit by the very tariff regime meant to encourage domestic investment. The result is that the policy designed to bring production home can make it more expensive to do exactly that.
The disruption also reaches longtime American production hubs. In Anderson County, South Carolina—where Electrolux has operated for nearly four decades and become one of the area's largest manufacturing employers—the company is phasing out refrigerator production in July, leaving its 1,200 employees without a job, at least for now, before the plant is retooled to produce fabric care appliances. While the company has framed the shutdown as temporary and says it will offer rehiring, the immediate result is more than 1,000 American manufacturing workers losing their jobs this summer.
Electrolux is not the only major North American appliance manufacturer struggling with increased price pressures resulting in failing factories. Whirlpool was hit with $300M in tariff costs in 2025, mostly on imported components, and eliminated more than 1700 jobs between March 2024 and October 2025, mostly in Iowa, and moved manufacturing production and jobs to Mexico in pursuit of cheaper labor costs.
GE Appliances’ announced a $490 million investment and plans to onshore a laundry production line in June 2025. However, CEO, Kevin Nolan said at a Financial Times event that tariffs on capital equipment and section 232 tariffs have produced frustrations in reshoring production lines due to uncertainty in the market and unexpected costs on equipment not yet produced in the U.S.
This is bad news for American manufacturing jobs.
The negative impacts of the tariffs on key metals also have hit the housing industry, which is an industry that doesn’t need further speed bumps laid in its path. More than 60% of homebuilders report higher costs due to tariffs, and the National Association of Home Builders estimates a typical cost impact of $10,900 per home from recent tariff actions (which extend beyond metals to such materials as softwood lumber). Nonresidential construction input prices surged at a 12.6% annualized rate in early 2026, the fastest pace since pandemic-era supply chain disruptions.
It gets worse.
43% of general contractors report at least one project canceled, postponed, or scaled back in the past six months due to tariff-driven material costs, and current tariff levels are projected to result in 450,000 fewer homes built through 2030, directly compounding the affordability crisis currently facing working American families.
None of this above is good news—and certainly not the news that tariffs were supposed to deliver for hardworking Americans. Interestingly, recent polling shows that younger “MAGA” voters are less inclined than all MAGA voters overall to see tariffs as beneficial to their lives and their communities—perhaps because younger, less experienced Americans see their employment options shrinking. That’s a shame.
At this time of America’s 250th birthday, we have a chance to deliver more good news to America. Congress and the President should continue to lower or even eliminate tariffs on anything that American businesses and consumers need right now to reverse the decline of American manufacturing.
Doing so would supercharge the economy by giving more Americans the opportunity to make more of their own choices with more of their own resources that they have earned (or could come to earn). Doing so would put the American Dream closer at hand for more Americans (and keep it from slipping away from those who’ve already realized it).
Doing so would revitalize American independence.
Paul Teller was in the Trump-Pence White House for all four years and worked for U.S. House and Senate conservatives for over 15 years.
