Closing the Trade Deficit Would Barely Raise the Share of US Manufacturing Employment Robert Lawrence Peterson Institute for International EconomicsThe American manufacturing trade deficit in 2024 was $1.2T. Robert Lawrence estimates that closing it would increase the share of manufacturing employment from 7.9% to 9.7% an increase of 1.7pp. Thus, the manufacturing value added in the trade deficit equaled 21.5% of US production. Had Americans maintained the same level of spending but met their demand with additional domestic production rather than through imports, manufacturing production would have been 21.5% larger. These results point to the dangers of exaggerating the gains that policies directed at closing the trade deficit are likely to induce.