The offshoring of American manufacturing over the past half-century has left deep scars across the nation — shuttered factories, hollowed-out communities, and a struggling middle class. Once-thriving industrial towns in the Midwest and Northeast became symbols of economic decline as politicians let corporations send production overseas, taking millions of good-paying jobs with them.
In New York, the decline hit hard from Buffalo to Long Island. Upstate cities such as Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica lost thousands of factory jobs as Kodak, GE, and Carrier shifted production overseas. On Long Island, aerospace and defense manufacturing—once the pride of Grumman and Fairchild—collapsed, leaving behind unemployment, lost skills, and communities struggling to reinvent themselves.
Author John Gardner argues that this collapse was no accident but the direct result of post–World War II economic policies that prioritized global free trade over national strength. “We’ve done the experiment,” Gardner said. “America can’t even make its own goods for its military. That’s not freedom — that’s dependency.”
In his new book, Manufacture Local: How to Make America the Manufacturing Superpower of the World, Gardner says President Trump is reversing that long decline. Through tariffs and reciprocal trade deals, Trump is using America’s vast consumer market as leverage to rebuild domestic manufacturing, restore jobs, and promote peace through what Gardner calls “tariff diplomacy.”
Rather than using military might, Trump has applied economic pressure to achieve geopolitical stability — from urging NATO to meet defense spending targets to brokering peace in resource-rich regions like Rwanda and Congo in exchange for rare-earth mineral partnerships. “He’s using tariffs not to start wars, but to prevent them,” Gardner said.
Gardner believes this strategy marks the beginning of a true manufacturing renaissance, one led by small and mid-sized firms — the workshops of 25 to 50 people that once formed the backbone of the American economy.