Tim Walz says U.S. lost more manufacturing jobs under Trump than any other president. Is that true?

MINNEAPOLIS — Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz did a round of interviews this week that included a stop on “The View.”

In that appearance, the governor blamed former President Donald Trump for losing the most manufacturing jobs in U.S. history.

“We know that Donald Trump lost more manufacturing jobs than any president in American history,” Walz said. “That’s simply factual.”

While technically and factually true, it’s misleading and out of context.

Walz leaves out one little thing: The deadly pandemic in 2020 that shut down the entire economy. 

A chart showing U.S. manufacturing jobs from Obama to Trump to Biden shows manufacturing jobs were going up under Trump. Suddenly, the bright red jobs line plummets and all those jobs come crashing down when COVID hits. 

In fact, the U.S. lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs during the first and worst pandemic months of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 775,000 of those jobs came back by the end of the year, but the numbers never returned to pre-pandemic levels before Trump left office. 

Another thing to note is that manufacturing jobs have been declining since the late 1970s. The U.S. had nearly 20 million jobs back then but has lost manufacturing work to foreign countries and automation.

There are around 13 million manufacturing jobs now.