The Great Step Back - Trump, AfD and the Myth of Industrial Jobs

Donald Trump had sold it as a triumph: "Liberation Day," the day he "freed" industry - from environmental regulations, from bureaucracy, from climate protection. Coal-fired power plants were to be brought back online, wind turbines and solar farms were stopped, investors lured with the promise that the United States would once again become the land of heavy industry. But the reality is sobering. Since April 2025, the US manufacturing sector has lost 42,000 jobs. The curve from the Center for American Progress drops steeply, month after month, with no sign of recovery.

And it is not just the raw numbers from manufacturing. The current evaluation of BLS data shows that overall blue-collar employment growth has slowed sharply in recent quarters. The red trend line in the year-over-year chart is almost down to zero - the growth of traditional working-class jobs, which was still at 800,000 in 2023, has practically come to a halt. Particularly serious is the collapse of manufacturing, which has shown negative growth rates again for the first time since the end of 2024. This means that not only are no new jobs being created, but net jobs are being lost.

In addition, the latest labor market figures show that manufacturing alone lost another 12,000 jobs in August 2025. This brings the annual decline to 78,000 jobs. Other core sectors such as construction, mining and oil & gas also declined, while public sector jobs also shrank. In total, only 22,000 new jobs were created in August - far below expectations - while the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, the weakest August in years.

This trend is particularly explosive for Germany as well. The AfD promises with almost identical slogans to Trump a "return to common sense," raves about restarting coal-fired power plants, the "abolition of wind turbine pollution" and an "industrial policy without ideology." Alice Weidel speaks in marketplaces about a "green coercive regime" that must be ended and gives the impression that stopping the energy transition could bring back a lost economic miracle. But reality shows something different - in the United States, the manufacturing sector has already lost 42,000 jobs since Trump's "Liberation Day" in April. Warning signs are also increasing in Germany: Investments in new solar and wind farms fell by 18 percent in 2024, while electricity prices for industry rose by over 12 percent. The mechanical engineering association VDMA warns that without plannable, cheap green energy, competitiveness will dwindle - 23 major industrial projects were canceled or relocated abroad in 2024 alone. Anyone who believes that turning off wind turbines and subsidizing coal plants will boost the economy risks the exact opposite: a slow but steady deindustrialization. This is a downward spiral that, once set in motion, can hardly be stopped - and in the end eats up exactly those jobs whose protection the AfD promises people.

Trump had promised to "bring the factories home." Four months after his Liberation Day, the balance sheet looks different: fewer jobs, less trust, less perspective. The supposed liberation turns out to be a liberation from employment. It is a warning to all who believe that you can turn back the clock: The world will not wait until a president has re-enacted the past.