There has been, and there will continue to be a lot of speculation about manufacturing and tariffs. Tariffs started to increase with Trump in 2017, and were kept by Biden. But among the differences between Trumponomics and Bidenomics (for more go here and here) was the smarter use of industrial policy, in the latter case.
The figure below shows Total Private Manufacturing Construction in the United States. Essentially how much firms spent on constructing of manufacturing installations. A poor proxy for manufacturing output (or potential), if not employment. Actual manufacturing output didn't grow much (a discussion on re-industrialization here; a very old post on deindustrialization here).
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As it can be seen, it is flat during the first Trump presidency, and takes off at some point towards the middle of 2021. This in part reflects the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Recovery Act, both from well into 2022, but given the timing, it also shows that simply the expansion of spending, that occurred as soon as Biden assumed the presidency, with the $1.9 trillion package of March 2021, may have been instrumental. By about mid-2024, the boom had lost steam.
I think there are good reasons to be skeptical about Peter Navarro's manufacturing boom (see last post here).
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