Eli Lilly: $6B
450 permanent jobs and 3,000 construction jobs. Small molecule and peptide medicines, including the GLP-1 pill. Built 2026 to 2032.
Source: City of Huntsville
Es PosibleEs Posible
Capital returns. Jobs arrive drop by drop. Mexico pays the bill.
Is the economy getting better under Trump? It is on track.
Factories are hiring again and core inflation is the lowest since 2021. Two pieces are missing: cheap money and wages that beat prices. Here is the scorecard, promise by promise.
In 2025 manufacturing lost 103,000 jobs. From January to September 2026 it recovered 72,000. The entire rebound came from durable goods: machinery, metals, equipment.
Short answer: the economy is moving in the direction Trump promised, and has not reached the goal yet. Factories have been regaining jobs since December 2025. Core inflation is the lowest in five years. Announced investment is a record. What is missing: lower rates and wages that beat prices.
| Promise | What happened | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Bring factory jobs back | Lost 103,000 in 2025. Recovered 72,000 in 2026, rising since the December low. 30% to go. | On track |
| Lower prices | Core inflation fell to 2.4%, the lowest since 2021. Headline (3.4%) is pushed by oil. | On track |
| Record factory investment | The announcements are a record. Turning them into construction is next: factory building is still falling. | On track |
| Jobs for legal American workers | Fewer foreign workers and factory unemployment down to 2.9%. The effect on natives is still debated. | On track |
| Lower interest rates | The Fed cut three times in 2025 and hiked in September 2026 on energy. Mortgages at 6.95%. | Pending |
| An economic boom | GDP grew 2.1% in 2025 and 1.5% in Q2 2026. | Pending |
The fair comparison is not who had the best number in a single year. It is where each started and where the curve is heading. Biden governed four full years, with the pandemic rebound at his back. Trump is twenty months in, with an Iran war against him.
| Indicator | Under Biden · 2021 to 2024 | Under Trump · 2025 to date | Trend today | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inflation | Peak of 9.1% in June 2022. Prices up 21.5% over four years. | Core down to 2.4%, the lowest since 2021. Headline 3.4%, on energy. | Improving | |
| Factory jobs | +531,000, including the pandemic rebound. | -103,000 in 2025. +72,000 in 2026, rising since December. | Improving | |
| Unemployment | Averaged 4.1%. | From 4.0% to 4.2%. Factory rate down to 2.9%. | Steady | |
| Real hourly wages | Fell 1.3% over four years. | Up 0.8% in the year to September 2025. -0.3% over the last year. | Pending | |
| Growth | 2.5% or more every year, driven by reopening. | 2.1% in 2025. 1.5% in Q2 2026. | Pending | |
| Factory construction | Nearly tripled on subsidies: from $82B to $236B a year. | Down 22% y/y as the subsidy wave ends. | Pending | |
| Model | Subsidies: CHIPS and the Inflation Reduction Act. | Tariffs on what comes in. |
Context that changes the reading: Biden inherited the pandemic rebound, which inflated growth and jobs in his early years. Trump inherited the tail end of the subsidized construction wave and, in 2026, an Iran war that sent energy soaring. That is why this scorecard measures the trend, not a single month.
What the data says: Trump's bet is on track where it depends on his policy, factories, investment, the border and core inflation. What is pending depends on the Fed and on oil: rates and real wages. The next twelve months will show whether the curve catches up with the promise.
An official message out of Alabama sums up the bet: Mercedes, Lilly, ArcelorMittal, U.S. Steel, Navy submarines, Coast Guard cutters. MANUFACTURING IS BACK. The money is real. What changed is what that money buys.
Eli Lilly will invest more than $6 billion in Huntsville. It is the largest private industrial investment in the state's history. It will employ 450 people. Construction starts in 2026 and ends in 2032.
Do the math. That is $13.3 million per job. Thirty years ago that money built a plant for thousands of workers. Today it builds reactors, clean rooms, robots and software.
This is the new industrial era. Capital intensive, high wages, few seats. The knowledge economy wearing a hard hat. The factory came back to America. The crowd of workers is not coming back.
450 permanent jobs and 3,000 construction jobs. Small molecule and peptide medicines, including the GLP-1 pill. Built 2026 to 2032.
Source: City of HuntsvilleAdditional investment through 2030 at a plant that employs about 5,800 people. Not a new plant: an expansion.
Source: State of AlabamaNon-grain-oriented electrical steel for EV motors: 150,000 tons a year and 205 jobs.
Source: Alabama Dept. of Commerce234 projects and 9,388 committed jobs. The highest year in Alabama history.
Source: Alabama Dept. of CommerceFigure circulated in Alabama's official message. No company filing reviewed for this essay.
Official claim, not independently verifiedNew Navy submarine facility in Cherokee and Coast Guard cutters built in Mobile, per the same message.
Official claim, not independently verified“Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust.FOMC · Statement of September 16, 2026
Tap each tab. Every chart carries two readings: what the number says and what it does not say. No figure without its source.
Pick a project or move the slider. The calculator divides announced investment by promised jobs and tells you how much capital it would take to replace the 103,000 factory jobs lost in 2025.
Analysis and educational tool. Announced, not spent, investment. The classic plant is an illustrative assumption for labor-intensive manufacturing.
“Clinton signed NAFTA. China entered the WTO under Clinton. Ohio paid the bill.Analysis · Simón Levy
To understand Trump you have to start in 1994. NAFTA took effect under Bill Clinton. In 2000 Clinton pushed permanent normal trade relations with China. A year later China joined the WTO.
In 1998 the United States had about 17.6 million factory jobs. In December 2025 it had 12.69 million. Acemoglu, Autor, Dorn, Hanson and Price attribute the loss of 2.0 to 2.4 million jobs from 1999 to 2011 to Chinese import competition.
That is the consensus the White House calls neoliberal and ties to the Democratic Party of the nineties. Trump's answer is the tariff as industrial policy: make the foreign company pay to get in, instead of making the taxpayer pay to lure it.
Here is the irony almost nobody mentions. Biden also broke with free trade, but through subsidies: CHIPS and the Inflation Reduction Act. Factory construction peaked in late 2024, near $250 billion annualized. Trump inherited that wave. It is now receding: down 22% from a year ago.
The test of the Trump model is not 2025. It is whether tariffs can build plants without subsidies once Biden's wave finishes passing.
Takes effect under Clinton. Mexico becomes North America's assembly floor.
Clinton signs permanent normal trade relations with China.
The China shock begins: 2.0 to 2.4 million jobs in a decade.
Trump taxes steel and aluminum. The first crack in the consensus.
Tougher auto rules of origin. NAFTA changes its name and its teeth.
Biden subsidizes factories. The industrial construction boom begins.
Factory construction nears $250B annualized.
Manufacturing loses 103,000 jobs. Mexico loses more than 111,000.
+72,000 factory jobs. The Fed hikes for the first time since 2023.
Drag the timeline
In March 2026 Mexico's Economy Ministry wrote to the U.S. Trade Representative. Its argument: in a single year, February 2025 to February 2026, the two countries together lost 213,347 factory jobs.
The U.S. lost 102,000. Subtract, and Mexico's share is about 111,000. The finding is awkward for both narratives. In 2025 nobody took jobs from anybody. Both lost at the same time, in the same supply chains.
The shift came in 2026. The U.S. started to recover. Mexico did not. Mexican manufacturing employment has fallen year over year for 40 straight months according to INEGI, the longest streak since the 2008 crisis.
Pick an industry. The red on each Mexican state measures IMMEX jobs lost from August 2024 to August 2025: darker means more loss. Nuevo León, in blue, gained. U.S. dots are the Alabama projects.
Analysis. The line between states is a sector match, not a documented plant-by-plant relocation. Cartography: Natural Earth, 1:10m state boundaries. Conformal conic projection.
One fact neither side disputes: the foreign-born population shrank. Using the survey's new weights, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates 1.1 to 1.3 million fewer than in January 2025.
The fight is over who filled the gap. Pick a reading. Both use the same BLS household survey.
The thesis: fewer undocumented workers, more openings for legal workers. Factory unemployment fell from 3.7% to 2.9% in a year and construction has grown seven months in a row.
The thesis: if natives had taken those jobs, their unemployment would have fallen. It rose. And the Census warns the survey cannot measure native and foreign-born counts precisely.
Labor supply shrank: that is a fact. Whether native workers won depends on which survey and which weights you use. The case is not closed.
On September 16 the Federal Reserve raised its target range to 3.75 to 4.00%. Unanimous, 12 to 0. The first hike since July 2023 and the first under Kevin Warsh as Fed chair.
The reason is inflation. The Fed projects 3.7% PCE inflation for 2026. The 30-year mortgage hit 6.95% on September 18, its highest since Trump returned to the White House. In February it was 6.01%.
Nominal pay is rising. Real pay is not. From August 2025 to August 2026, inflation-adjusted hourly earnings fell 0.3%. For production workers, 0.1%. A year earlier they were up 0.8%.
For a founder this becomes one simple rule: the cheap credit that funded the 2021 to 2024 boom is gone. Grow on cash.
A serious essay puts the other side's best argument on the table. Here it is.
They count 108,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the first year of the second term, more than BLS first reported.
Tariffs raise the cost of steel, copper and wiring. They punish U.S. manufacturers that buy those inputs.
Factory construction is down 22% year over year. The money went to data centers and power, not plants.
A big slice of manufacturing depends on housing: sawmills, furniture. With mortgages near 7%, that branch can't take off.
Real wages have been negative for months. More factory jobs do not offset inflation.
Part of the foreign-born drop in the survey may be people who stopped answering, not people who left.
The White House reply: 2025 was the adjustment year and 2026 the rebound. The 2026 numbers give it part of the argument. The factory investment numbers do not, yet.
Six readings to decide where to put capital, suppliers and people over the next twelve months.
Data center construction hit $75.2B annualized, a record, up 57% in a year. Power construction, $181.5B. That is the real boom.
Lilly in Huntsville sets the template: billions, a few hundred jobs, lots of engineers. Lab suppliers, validation and automation win.
The whole 2026 rebound came from durables: 101,000 jobs in nine months. Machinery and fabricated metals keep hiring.
Submarines and cutters in Alabama. Federal spending with a decade-long horizon. Long contracts, steady margins.
Origin transshipment is now prosecuted under the Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) and the False Claims Act. If your chain runs through Mexico, document origin.
With the Fed hiking and mortgages at 6.95%, leverage hurts. Advantage to whoever grows on own cash flow.
Jobs: BLS, Employment Situation, September 2026 (Oct 2, 2026): manufacturing +9,000 in Sep, +72,000 from Dec 2025 low; factory unemployment 2.9% vs 3.7%. Fiscal Lab: durables +101,000 in 9 months. FRED/BLS via Manufacturing Dive: -103,000 Jan 2025 to Jan 2026. BLS: 12.692 million in Dec 2025.
Wages: BLS, Real Earnings, August 2026 (Sep 11, 2026) and TED Sep 7, 2026.
Credit: Federal Reserve, FOMC statement Sep 16, 2026. Freddie Mac PMMS: 6.01% (Feb 19, 2026), 6.49% (Jul 9), 6.69% (Aug 6), 6.95% (Sep 18).
Investment: U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending via FRED (TLMFGCONS) and KPMG (Sep 1, 2026): manufacturing $169.8B, -22% y/y; power $181.5B; data centers $75.2B, +57%.
Alabama: City of Huntsville; Alabama Dept. of Commerce 2025 report; State of Alabama (Jun 17, 2026).
Immigration: Center for Immigration Studies (Camarota, Jul 2026; American Affairs, May 2026); NFAP policy briefs Feb and Mar 2026.
Mexico: Secretaría de Economía, letter to USTR (Mar 2026); INEGI, IMMEX and EMIM; IMSS; state IMMEX data Aug 2024 to Aug 2025 published by Expansión based on INEGI.
History: Acemoglu, Autor, Dorn, Hanson and Price, Journal of Labor Economics (2016).
Verdict: BLS, CPI August 2026 (Sep 11, 2026): 3.4% headline, 2.4% core. BEA: GDP 2025 +2.1% and 2024 +2.8%; Q1 2026 +2.1%, Q2 2026 +1.5%. FactCheck.org, Biden's Final Numbers (Oct 2025): prices +21.5%, manufacturing +531,000, average unemployment 4.1%. PERC, Texas A&M (Feb 2025): real hourly earnings -1.3% over Biden's term. BLS: unemployment 4.0% in January 2025 and 4.2% in September 2026.