This article originally appeared in The Washington Examiner February 2, 2026.

It’s Groundhog Day, and just like in the eponymous 1993 movie, presidents are singing the same tune on trade, over and over.

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” President Donald Trump said last year.

Before Trump, President Joe Biden said, “Companies took their jobs overseas to get cheaper labor. Factories closed down. Manufacturing slowed. Entire communities became hollowed out as American workers lost their paychecks and sense of pride.”

And then there’s President Barack Obama, who declared in 2012, “Too many factories where people thought they’d retire have left town. Too many jobs that provided a decent living have been shipped overseas. And the hard truth is, a lot of those jobs aren’t coming back.”

This nearly apocalyptic view of trade has been popular for a while. But it wasn’t always this way. Presidents used to note that trade can be a good thing, and that only in special cases did it result in people losing their jobs.

“Trade brings better jobs and better choices and better prices. Yet for some Americans, trade can mean losing a job, and the federal government has a responsibility to help,” President George W. Bush said in 2008. His predecessors made similar points.

And more than 60 years earlier, President Harry S. Truman warned of the dangers of tariffs and trade wars. He said that when a manufacturer feels wronged by foreign trade, “he appeals to his government for action. His government retaliates, and another round of tariff boosts, embargoes, quotas, and subsidies is under way. This is economic war. In such a war nobody wins.”

What changed between the 20th century and the 21st century? A great deal — and it changed for the better, in fact. No other big country is close to the United States in terms of income. A third of American households now earn more than $150,000 a year, up from 5% in 1967, when adjusted for inflation. If trade hollowed out U.S. industry by making cheap labor available in other countries, why is our country still leading the world in income and wealth?

It’s true that trade comes with complicated trade-offs. But trade is much more than inexpensive foreign goods competing with American products. Thanks to trade, we now have endless fruits and vegetables available during all seasons. Foreign car companies hire American workers and push domestic automakers to make better vehicles. We have seen a massive increase in demand around the world for U.S.-made machinery. There are countless ways that Americans have benefited from trade.

Trade is also more interesting than the simple narrative recent presidents sell. Much of America’s trade is for capital goods and industrial supplies, which U.S. companies then use to make goods at domestic factories. Half of all imports are for these products; U.S. exports are even higher at 67%. International trade is vital to keeping American manufacturers on the efficiency edge.

Overall, America has more jobs than ever, and those jobs pay better than ever. And remarkably, the U.S. manufactures more than ever. Part of this is due to increased demand for American goods abroad. The bottom line is that America has not been hollowed out.

So why the endless presidential rhetoric about the destruction wrought by trade? It surely resonates with a primal belief many people hold that our nation’s problems are caused by outsiders. Politicians can score points with voters by stoking that sentiment. So, they do.

That means presidents will continue pooh-poohing trade, regardless of whether it’s justified. We will keep hearing the same tired and false arguments again and again until, like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day, we learn that there’s a better way.

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