Marco Rubio argued in February that decades of economic policy built around unrestricted trade weakened American industry, hollowed out manufacturing communities and left the United States dangerously dependent on foreign countries for critical goods.

Rubio said the damage was not accidental. In his view, U.S. leaders made deliberate choices that allowed foreign competitors to protect their own industries while American companies and workers were exposed to subsidized competition from overseas.

"In this delusion, we embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours, shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals," Rubio said.

He argued that the decline of domestic manufacturing should not be treated as an unavoidable consequence of modernization or globalization.

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"Deindustrialization was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their productive capacity, and of their independence," Rubio said.

According to Rubio, those policies did more than eliminate factory jobs. He said they weakened the country’s ability to produce essential goods at home and increased dependence on other nations during periods of disruption.

"It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis," Rubio said.

Reacting to Rubio’s remarks, Jillian Michaels turned to a series of economic figures that she said indicate the United States is beginning to reverse some of those trends.

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"Let's look at whether or not what they're doing is working or having an impact," Michaels said.

She pointed first to new manufacturing announcements.

"So you've got 251 companies that just announced more than 2 trillion in new U.S. factories since 2025, led by Apple, TSMC, Micron, Lilly, and J&J, and Micron, Lilly, TSMC, and Texas Instruments have already broken ground on those factories. And this is from Industrial Sage U.S. manufacturing investment tracker," Michaels said.

Michaels also cited reshoring figures showing a large number of manufacturing jobs announced in 2025.

"244,000 reshored manufacturing jobs were announced in 2025. This is from Reshoring Initiative," she said.

She then pointed to more recent employment numbers as another sign that manufacturing conditions may be improving.

"Factory jobs are growing again. Manufacturing added 16,000 jobs this past August, its third straight monthly gain, up 58,000 since December of last year, after three straight years of losses. This is from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics," Michaels said.

Michaels also highlighted changes in trade deficits with several major trading partners.

"The China trade deficit fell 32% in 2025 and is down another 29% this year. This is from the U.S. Census Bureau. The deficit with the EU is down 66% this year. Japan is down 34% this year. The India trade deficit is down 31% this year. Switzerland flipped from a 56 billion dollar deficit to a 19 billion dollar surplus," Michaels said.

She emphasized that she wanted the sources of the figures to be clear.

"It is important to be totally transparent. U.S. Census Bureau-that's where all that information comes from," Michaels said.

Michaels finished by pointing to the broader U.S. trade deficit over the previous 12 months.

"The total U.S. trade deficit over the last 12 months is 744 billion, which is down 18% from last year, and that comes from the Joint Economic Committee monthly trade update," she said.

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Taken together, Rubio’s warning and Michaels’ response present two sides of the same economic argument. Rubio described decades of deindustrialization as the result of policy choices that moved jobs and production overseas while surrendering control of key supply chains. Michaels, meanwhile, pointed to factory investment, reshoring announcements, manufacturing job gains and declining trade deficits as evidence that domestic production is beginning to strengthen again.

The figures Michaels cited suggest that the effort to rebuild manufacturing capacity is producing measurable changes, with new factories being announced, projects breaking ground and trade imbalances narrowing with several major economies.

Rubio’s argument is that economic independence depends on restoring the ability to make more goods at home. Michaels’ data-driven response was that the reshoring process may already be moving in that direction.

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