Can American Schools Fuel Trump’s Proposed Manufacturing Revival?

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A version of this essay appeared on Robert Pondiscio’s Substack.

President Donald Trump’s vision to revive American manufacturing — a linchpin of his economic and national security strategy — rests on a bold promise: a renaissance of high-tech factories staffed by skilled tradespeople. The White House, defending steep tariffs to incentivize domestic production, argues that decades of trade deficits have “hollowed out” America’s manufacturing base, resulting in “a lack of incentive to increase advanced domestic manufacturing capacity.” This, in turn, has “undermined critical supply chains; and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick painted a bracing picture of this industrial renaissance. “There’s going to be mechanics, there’s going to be HVAC specialists, there’s going to be electricians — the tradecraft of America,” he exclaimed on CBS’s Face the Nation earlier this month. “Our high school-educated Americans, the core to our workforce, is [sic] going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America, to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America.”

It’s a stirring vision, but it hinges on a question that’s been largely ignored amid the political and economic debates over tariffs: Does America’s education system have what it takes to produce the workforce needed to staff a manufacturing revival? To put the question bluntly, is it any better at career and technical education than teaching kids to read and do math proficiently?

The evidence suggests a mixed picture: CTE is a comparative bright spot in America’s challenged education system, but serious hurdles, from misaligned training to automation’s rising demands, raise doubts about whether schools are equipped to meet the moment. Fewer than 40% of the country holds a college degree, so Lutnick is correct to say high school-educated Americans are the “core” of the workforce. But manufacturing is no longer reliably safe terrain for an unskilled worker with minimal education. Even before Trump took office, a 2024 report forecast a need for up to 3.8 million additional skilled manufacturing employees by 2033 — while predicting that half of those could go unfilled if skills and applicant gaps go unaddressed.

Let’s start with the good news. CTE delivers tangible outcomes where core academics often stumble. While only 26% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math on the 2022 NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, CTE programs demonstrably funnel kids into the workforce. High schoolers who take multiple CTE courses tend to outperform peers who don’t in earnings and employment rates. Even more encouraging, a 2022 report published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found these CTE “concentrators” are 8.4 percentage points more likely to avoid poverty and are significantly more likely to earn above the poverty threshold seven years after high school. They are also less likely to be disengaged — neither employed nor participating in education or training.

These are positive outcomes, and unsurprising. With 85% of 2019 high school graduates earning at least one CTE credit and 77% of CTE students graduating on time — often despite being at-risk — CTE’s focus on jobs over test scores suggests that K-12 can do something right when the goal is paychecks, not just test scores. At its best, CTE aligns education with the practical demands of the labor market, offering pathways to careers that don’t require a four-year degree but still promise stability and dignity.

But those successes are not universal, and the broader K-12 system’s weaknesses cast a long shadow over Trump’s manufacturing ambitions. A 2019 report by my former colleagues at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that CTE programs often fail to align with the needs of local job markets. Nothing useful comes from schools churning out workers trained as welders in regions where robotics or advanced manufacturing jobs dominate — or might in the future. More concerning, only about 5% of CTE concentrators focus on manufacturing, lagging behind other fields such as health science, agriculture, business management, and hospitality and tourism. tourism. A report co-authored by Boston College’s Shaun Dougherty found that schools have an even tougher time filling CTE teaching positions than openings in academic subjects, and that CTE teachers in high-growth areas with occupational licenses are much more likely to leave the profession and enter industry, where they can earn more. 

The broader K-12 system’s academic struggles don’t inspire confidence, either. That 26% math proficiency rate among eighth-graders isn’t just a statistic; it’s a flashing red warning light. The elephant in the room is automation, which shifts manufacturing job demands toward advanced skills like robotics and computer numerical control programming, which involves writing instructions, or code, that tells a machine how to operate and perform tasks like cutting, drilling or milling. In sum, manufacturing is no longer about low-skill, repetitive tasks, but about sophisticated, tech-driven processes. If three-quarters of students can’t master middle school math, the demands of modern manufacturing are likely beyond them. 

The poor performance of K-12 education doesn’t augur well for a renaissance in even semi-skilled labor. Specialized CTE high schools and postsecondary schools perform well, but most such students are still in traditional settings, notes Dougherty. “I don’t think that we have evidence that in … comprehensive high schools where we’re offering CTE, that we are systematically doing better in teaching CTE than we are in math and reading,” he tells me.

Finally, and perhaps ominously, there are factors schools can’t fully control. Soft skills like initiative and work ethic are critical in manufacturing, yet they’re notoriously hard to teach. Tim Taylor of America Succeeds, a nonprofit aimed at mobilizing business to support education, shared an anecdote about an Austin, Texas, manufacturer who handed out 75 business cards at a career fair, inviting students to come for a job interview. Only three showed up. Taylor’s organization emphasizes mid-skill, mid-wage jobs as the goal — not low-skill, low-wage work that’s easily automated or offshored. But fostering the initiative to seize those opportunities requires more than curriculum; it demands a cultural shift.

So, can American education rise to the challenge of Trump’s manufacturing revival? The answer is a qualified maybe. CTE is a proven pathway for getting kids into the workforce, and its focus on practical skills makes it better suited than traditional academics to meet industry’s immediate needs. Getting serious about this revival will take more than tariffs and rhetoric. It means ensuring CTE programs are tightly aligned with local economies and forward-looking enough to prepare students for an automated future. It means fixing the academic foundations — math, literacy, problem-solving — that underpin technical skills. And it means cultivating a culture that values hard work and opportunity, not just credentials. 

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