Trump wants to create manufacturing jobs. Their technological allies invest in robots to do the job.

President Donald Trump has interrupted global trade and markets eliminated in an effort to bring manufacturing jobs to the US.
Elon Musk, a main donor and advisor to Trump, has promoted humanoid robots as an area of future growth for Electric Producer Tesla. “It can produce any product,” Musk said about the potential capacity of robots during an February interview with the Summit of Dubai World Governments.
The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, whom Trump last month “featrific”, has invested in several advanced robotics firms.
Last year, Bezos invested funds in the figure, a humanoid robot company that says that its initial deployment will focus on manufacturers and warehouses, among other commercial applications. “We believe that humanoids will revolutionize a variety of industries,” says the company on its website.
The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, and the CEO of Operai Sam Altman, who joined Trump in their recent trip to the Middle East, directed their respective companies as each invested in the figure. Operai finished his association with the figure last year.
“Trump is talking about bringing the works back, and does not understand the tension between that objective and automation, so the technological brothers have enthusiasm,” News Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at the University of Georgetown and a former chief economist of the United States Department of Labor. “There is a fundamental conflict between those goals.”
Musk did not immediately respond to the request for ABC News comments made through the SpaceX firm owned by musk. Neither Bezos, Huang nor Altman responded to the ABC News request.
Speaking at a conference in April, Huang said that the beginning of artificial intelligence would feed the “new types of factories”, which in turn would create jobs in the construction and creation of steel, as well as in offices such as plumbing and electricity.
Even more, Huang said, AI will trigger an increase in productivity in companies that adopt the new technology, which allows them to add employees as companies increase production and income.
“New jobs will be created, some jobs will be lost, each job will change,” said Huang. “Remember, it is not the one that will carry your work. It is not the one that will destroy your company. It is the company and the person who uses the one who will carry his work. And that is something to internalize.”
Even after a reversal of some taxes, consumers face the highest average general average rate since 1934, the Yale Budget Laboratory found earlier this month.
A key reason for tariffs, the White House officials say: reinforce factories and rejuvenate employment in the manufacturing industry.
The Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, said this month in an interview with Fox News that Trump’s vision to mark the beginning of a “golden age” for the United States involved attracting manufacturers to open factories and build in the United States.
“We are going to have great jobs in manufacturing. You have heard the president talk about billions and billions of factories that are built in the United States,” he said in the interview on May 11.
In response to the request for comments from ABC News, the White House spokesman Kush Desai said: “The importance of President Trump’s impulse to revitalize the US industry goes beyond creating well -paid jobs for everyday Americans.”
“The clashes of the supply chain of critical pharmaceutical products, medical and semiconductor equipment during the COVID era show that the United States cannot trust foreign imports. The Trump administration remains committed to the reformulation of manufacturing that is fundamental for our national and economic safety with a multifaceted rate approach, tax cuts, rapid domestic drags and domestic energy production,” he added Desai.
The proportion of American workers in manufacturing has collapsed for decades. Approximately 8% of American workers currently take place in manufacturing, which marks a strong decrease of approximately a quarter of all employees as recently as 1970.
Researchers attribute such decline to overlapping trends, including the relocation of manufacturing to low -salaries markets abroad and the adoption of labor savings technology throughout the sector.
Long before current advances, automation significantly increased productivity in US factories. found In 2015. As a result, they said, the manufacture of employment stagnated for decades even when production rose.
“Automation is something we have seen for a long time,” Philipp Kircher, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University to ABC News.

CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sánchez, the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai and Tesla and the CEO of Spacex, Elon Musk, attend the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025.
Julia DeMaree Nikhinson, Pool through AFP through Getty Images, Archive
Some of Trump’s technological allies have backed companies that seek to further automate manufacturing, promoting a new wave of robots equipped with artificial intelligence as a replacement for some workers and ointment for the shortage of labor.
The Robotics Vicarious team has $ 250 million in investments of a set of sponsors that includes Bezos, Musk and the Meta Mark Zuckerberg CEO, all of which flanked Trump during its inauguration.
In Web page Showing robots photos for use in warehouse configuration, Vicarious tells potential customers that products can “reduce their costs and person’s needs.”
In 2022, Vicarious was acquired by the robotic software firm backed by the Intrinsic alphabet. Alphabet’s CEO, Slándar Pichai, also sat next to technological leaders at Trump’s inauguration.
Alphabet did not respond to the request for comments from ABC News. Goal declined to comment.
Yong Suk Lee, professor of Economics and Technology at the University of Notre Dame, described the opinions about automation between Trump’s technological allies and some of his commercial advisors such as “opposites.”
The technological position, Lee said, will probably win, even if some companies open plants in the United States.
“If you want to rebuild, are you going to pay the same salary as Vietnam? Probably not,” Lee said. “Companies face higher work costs. In that case, they will probably automate.”
The discordant opinions among some technological leaders and White House officials arose in April, when Musk abruptly criticized the Trump Peter Navarro lawyer, Trump’s main counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro, said Musk, is “truly a moron.”
In an interview with CNBC, Navarro responded, saying that Musk “is not a car manufacturer, it is a car assembler.”
Undoubtedly, analysts said, manufacturing automation would probably continue regardless of the support of Trump’s technological allies, since producers are locked in a competition to reduce costs and increase production. The precise perspective for manufacturing use is not clear, they added, since additional technology can add jobs for those who maintain and optimize the machinery.
“It is already the companies that currently support the president of the United States or not, someone would be doing this innovation, perhaps a little slower,” Kircher said.
Even at current employment levels, a shortage of labor attributes to US manufacturers. Approximately one in five Factories in the United States. Who failed to produce a shortage of workers, Jason Miller, professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, found in January study Government data analysis.
Agility Robots, a company backed by Amazon Builting Humanoid Robots, identifies the current impulse to rejuvenate the manufacture of the United States as an opportunity for a greater adoption of technology.
“Manufacturing companies are seeing a massive reinforcement movement that covers several industries,” says Agility Robots on their website. “Adding a humanoid robot to its manufacturing installation is an excellent way to stay at the forefront of automation.”
In response to the request for comments from ABC News, a Amazon spokesman pointed out previous comments on robotics made by an executive of the company.
“Nuestro objetivo es garantizar que estos sistemas mejoren la seguridad y la productividad. La tecnología debe usarse para ayudarnos a retener y hacer crecer nuestro talento a través del desarrollo de habilidades y reinventar cómo mejoramos nuestro lugar de trabajo, tanto en productividad como en seguridad. Si lo hacemos bien, seguramente innovamos para nuestros clientes”, dijo Tye Brady, tecnólogo jefe de Amazon Robotics, en septiembre en septiembre en septiembre en septiembre en septiembre en septiembre de un septiembre de septiembre en septiembre. Blog.
Amazon has “created more US works. In the last decade than any other company,” Amazon saying This month.