Nobel Prize-winning economist shows how manufacturing started to die under Trump long before the COVID outbreak

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman revealed shocking data showing that President Donald Trump's policies began bringing down the manufacturing sector long before the 2020 recession began this February.

Krugman explained that Trump's erratic policies over the manufacturing sector, his longterm trade war that took years to fix after he broke it, ultimately sent output tumbling in 2018.

"So the flailing now isn't really new, although it's more extreme as the election goes into its end game," Krugman explained.

It only adds to the thousands of manufacturing jobs lost under Trump's administration as he claims that he's bringing the sector back to live.

"The Trump administration has taken credit for 'reshoring' manufacturing jobs, but the data show that isn't true. Nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared under Trump between 2016 and 2018," said EPI Senior Economist and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Research Robert E. Scott. "Additionally, the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods rose significantly between 2016 and 2019. In fact, the real U.S. trade deficit has increased in every year since 2016, reducing GDP growth by roughly 0.25% annually over the past three years. Compounded with the devastation left by the coronavirus pandemic, the blue-collar manufacturing workers need serious help from policymakers."

In September, Trump hailed a manufacturing miracle, but factories were bleeding jobs.

Trump's trade wars decimated the sector, sending it into another slump in 2019, forMichigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. It all started long before the layoffs from COVID-19 took the country down, noted Politico.

Krugman explained that the U.S. can't take much more.