Americans “don’t make anything anymore,” said Donald Trump on Fox on Sunday with Chris Wallace, lamenting what he sees as the death of U.S. manufacturing. “I just ordered 4,000 television sets. You know where they come from? South Korea … I don’t think anybody makes television sets in the United States anymore.” Actually, America still makes televisions. More importantly, Trump’s insinuation that trade has destroyed U.S. manufacturing is fundamentally mistaken.

The truth is that U.S. manufacturing is thriving, although the industry employs fewer people, mainly because of automation—not trade. Would Trump undo technological progress and massive savings to bring back manufacturing jobs?

The rumors of American manufacturing’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Sales revenues and output are rising. In 2014, value-added by the industry set a new record. While it’s true that manufacturing is a smaller share of the U.S. economy than it once was, that’s not because it isn’t growing—other sectors of the economy are simply growing faster.

Read the full article at the Cato Institute: Trump Is Wrong: America Makes Tons of Stuff