One Year of Trump's Tariffs: A Lifeline for Millbrook or Just Another Broken Promise?

By Tucker McAllister | Circus of Power | April 28, 2026

I remember the day the Delco plant in Millbrook shuttered like it was yesterday. It was 2016, and the air still smelled of machine oil and desperation as 1,200 good-paying jobs vanished overnight, shipped off to some factory in Shenzhen where workers earn pennies on the dollar. Folks who'd built their lives around those assembly lines—my neighbors, my friends—watched their savings evaporate, their kids' college dreams deferred, and Main Street turn into a ghost town of payday loan shops and empty storefronts. That wasn't just a factory closing; it was the American Dream getting offshored, courtesy of one-sided trade deals that treated China like a partner and American workers like disposable parts.

Fast forward a decade, and here we are, marking the one-year anniversary of President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, rolled out in April 2025 as a bold swing at reviving manufacturing. Trump called it a declaration of economic independence, slapping 25% duties on steel and aluminum imports, 10-20% on a laundry list of Chinese goods from electronics to autos, and promising to claw back billions in trade deficits. The White House touted it as the start of an America First renaissance, with U.S. Steel announcing the restart of a mill in Indiana just last month, bringing 225 jobs back to life. That's real—folks in Gary, Indiana, are punching clocks again, making the kind of steel that built this country.

But if you drive through Millbrook today, or any of the rust-belt towns like it, you won't see parades or booming factories. You'll see the same hollowed-out lots, the same "For Sale" signs gathering dust. Job growth in manufacturing? Flat as a pancake, according to a fresh analysis from the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. They crunched the numbers: Since the tariffs kicked in, we've added a measly 12,000 jobs in the sector nationwide—peanuts compared to the 5 million we've lost to offshoring since NAFTA. Uncertainty is the killer here, they say, with companies holding off on investments because no one knows if these tariffs are a temporary fix or the real deal. And with the Iran blockade jacking up energy prices—World Bank projects a 24% surge this year, pushing gas toward $100-a-barrel oil equivalents—those potential jobs feel even further out of reach. Truckers in Ohio are already grumbling about fuel costs eating into their margins, and that's before tariffs ripple through supply chains.

Don't get me wrong—I'm no free-trade cheerleader. I've spent 12 years as mayor watching coastal elites in Washington and Wall Street preach the gospel of globalization while our communities crumbled. Tariffs aren't perfect, but they're a necessary weapon in a trade war we didn't start. China didn't play fair: They stole our tech, flooded our markets with subsidized junk, and laughed all the way to a $400 billion annual surplus with us. Trump's Liberation Day was a gut check, forcing Beijing to the table. The U.S. Trade Representative's 2026 agenda lays it out plain: Pair these tariffs with bilateral deals to slash the deficit and bring production home. We've seen glimmers—Apple shifting some iPhone assembly to Texas, Ford ramping up domestic battery plants to dodge EV tariffs on Chinese imports. A Cato Institute post on X last week pointed out China's own demographics are biting them—aging workforce, shrinking labor pool—but that's no excuse for us to keep handing them our lunch money.

The pro-tariff crowd, including a Wall Street Journal op-ed from Michael Mandelbaum today, calls it a roaring success, arguing Trump's approach is "consistent with historical realism." They're right that it's forcing allies like Canada to rethink their auto exports, with Ottawa warning of retaliatory hits on U.S. whiskey and cheese. But let's be honest: For the working stiff in Millbrook, it's not roaring yet. Marketplace's recent report nails the downside—tariffs are "paralyzing" supply chains, hiking costs for everything from car parts to canned goods. A mid-sized toolmaker in my old district told me last week they're paying 15% more for imported steel alloys, even with domestic options ramping up slowly. That squeezes margins, delays expansions, and keeps the "Help Wanted" signs from going up.

Critics will holler that tariffs are just a tax on consumers, inflating prices and sparking inflation. Yeah, grocery bills are up 3% since last spring, per the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and that's no joke when families are already stretched thin. The free-trade purists at places like the Peterson Institute for International Economics trot out models showing every tariff dollar costs American households $200 a year. They'll say we should negotiate smarter, not swing a sledgehammer—point to how Biden's old CHIPS Act subsidies lured semiconductor plants without the trade-war drama.

Fair points, but here's the counter: Those models ignore the human cost of doing nothing. When Delco left, it wasn't abstract "efficiency"—it was suicide rates spiking, opioid tents popping up in backyards, and kids dropping out because Mom and Dad couldn't afford books. Free trade sounded great when it lined executives' pockets, but it hollowed out the heartland. Tariffs aren't the endgame; they're the stick to force fair play. Trump's team knows it—pairing duties with incentives like the expanded Section 301 exclusions for U.S.-made components. And look at the data buried in the noise: Import volumes from China dropped 18% in the first year, per USTR stats, while domestic steel production ticked up 7%. That's not paralysis; that's progress, if we give it time and teeth.

This anniversary hits harder with the world on fire. Iran's "war situation" in the Strait of Hormuz, as their spokesperson put it on Al Jazeera today, is choking global shipping and spiking energy costs that make every tariff dollar hurt more. Why are we blockading ports halfway around the world—CENTCOM Marines boarding ships in the Arabian Sea—while our own factories idle for lack of affordable power? Trump's America First foreign policy should mean prioritizing domestic revival over endless Middle East quagmires. China, meanwhile, plays the statesman, hosting Iran talks in Beijing while raking in our trade dollars to fund it all. AP reports the U.S. "appears uninterested" in those diplomacy channels—fine, but don't let Beijing's surplus grease their global ambitions at our expense.

Immigration ties in here too, though it's not the headline today. With border encounters down to 11,000 in March—Bush Center data— we've got breathing room to enforce wages in manufacturing. But stories like the Indian national illegally in the country assaulting a toddler in San Antonio, viral on X with 13,000 views, remind us: Unchecked inflows undercut American workers, flooding low-skill jobs and driving down pay in places like Millbrook. Tariffs alone won't fix that; we need borders that work for citizens first.

So where do we go from here? Congress needs to stop the infighting—Speaker Johnson's scrapped votes on DHS funding today show the GOP's still a mess on priorities—and pass real enforcement. Make the USTR agenda law: Tie tariff relief to verifiable job creation, audit Chinese compliance like hawks, and invest tariff revenues in vocational training for towns like mine. No more fairy tales about global harmony; it's time for deals that put American steel back in American hands.

One year in, Liberation Day feels more like a skirmish than a victory. But it's a start—one that could rebuild Millbrook if we don't let the experts and the swamp water it down. Working folks didn't vote for more studies or summits; they voted for jobs. Let's deliver.

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Tucker McAllister is a former mayor of Millbrook, Ohio and writes on trade, immigration, and working-class America.

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