Smith: US factory construction boomed under Biden after decades of stagnation
Noah Smith · Oren Cass & Noah Smith Debate the True Impact of Tariffs · Aug 20, 2025 · at 29:24
Economic commentator Noah Smith compares U.S. manufacturing factory construction trends across the Biden and Trump administrations during a trade policy debate on The a16z Podcast.
0:00 / 0:37exact quote · 37.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“But when you look at factory construction, real, real factory construction, you saw this enormous, you saw it basically flat at a flat level for decades and decades at a fairly low level. Then you saw this enormous boom during the Biden years and all the factories concentrated in the areas where Biden's industrial policy was, you know, sort of incentivizing factories chips, batteries, and other things like that. Just this enormous boom And that now, since Trump got into office, you've seen that boom go into reverse. You see, you're seeing the pace of new factory construction falling since, ah, quote unquote, liberation day.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Noah Smith
Smith: Elon Musk is the only entrepreneur to scale US manufacturing
“Who's the only entrepreneur who's been able to successfully scale manufacturing in America, you know, even in the face of international competition, and it's been pretty credible because his supply chains are far more domestically sourced than most manufacture…”
Noah Smith: Smartphone technology is driving global fertility far below replacement
“Phones have destroyed the human race. Like, the fertility crash that's happening all around the world. Nobody has replacement level fertility. Fertility is going far below replacement everywhere because of technology.”
Noah Smith: AI companionship will cause human population to continually dwindle
“The human race does not have a desire, a collective desire to perpetuate itself. We can, you know, yes, we're going to get lonely, but we'll have company through AI and through the internet. Social media, you know, until there's just a few of us and we dwindle…”
Noah Smith: Most of Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI predictions have been proven wrong
“I would say that already most of the things he predicted have been invalidated or made irrelevant in the last year and a half, like, and especially in terms, like all the comp stuff about competition with China you know, like it turns out filtration was able t…”