“Since the very beginning of NAFTA, our country lost 90,000 factories,” Mr. Trump said during his Rose Garden speech on April 2, as he announced a host of tariff hikes. The president repeated the claim in his Monday remarks.
While the U.S. has seen a decline in the number of factories, the claim of 90,000 factories lost appears to be based on outdated data and includes small facilities with only a few employees.
The 90,000 figure matches a 2020 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, which found that there was a net loss of about 91,000 manufacturing establishments between 1997 and 2018.
However, the analysis relied on Census Bureau data that was significantly revised in 2021, the group told CBS News. The updated figures show a net loss of about 70,500 manufacturing establishments from 1997 to 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.