Peter Suderman, writing for libertarian Reason magazine:
Last week, the Federal Reserve reported that U.S. manufacturing was in a recession for all of 2019. This wasn't slow growth; the sector actually became smaller. The slowdown was relatively mild, with factory production shrinking by about 1.3 percent. But it was the worst performance since 2015, the year that Trump started his presidential campaign…
…the uncertainty and increased costs surrounding Trump's trade war, which was billed as a way of supporting American factory jobs, has instead wreaked havoc on an export-heavy sector that relies on the global flow of goods to operate. Trump's interventions were intended to prop up U.S. manufacturing. But they backfired, harming the people he claimed to help…
…
Nor are manufacturing jobs the only ones to be hit by trade costs and uncertainty. As a New York Times report notes, middle-wage job growth, which includes manufacturing as well as occupations like mining and construction, slowed considerably over 2019, dropping from 2.6 percent to 1.3 percent, owing to trade-war squabbling. "That slowdown is driving the deceleration of job growth across the American economy," the report notes. Farming, another industry that Trump campaigned on helping, was so harmed by the trade war that the Trump administration ended up spending some $28 billion—more than double the price tag of President Obama's auto bailout—to keep them afloat.