Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the crew at CNBC this week that President Trump’s goal of bringing manufacturing back to the United States was a “pipedream.”

It was an odd remark, given how her former boss, Joe Biden, ran for president on the prospect that he could revive manufacturing in the U.S. — the central pillar of his promise to rebuild the economy “from the bottom up and middle out.”

Did Yellen not believe Biden’s campaign pitch? Was she not on board with the CHIPS Act, which threw tens of billions of dollars at semiconductor firms to encourage their shifting production to the U.S.?

Yellen also claims she does not understand the rationale for Trump’s tariff war, which she calls a “self-inflicted wound.” When Biden ran for president in 2020, he promised to do away with tariffs President Trump had imposed on China. Not only did he keep those tariffs in place, he added to them in 2024, trying to protect America’s industries by putting a 100 percent tariff on imports of Chinese electric vehicles and slapping solar panels with a 50 percent duty, among other assorted products. Did Yellen protest those taxes on imports from China?

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In short, is Yellen pessimistic about U.S. manufacturing and negative on tariffs because it is Trump at........

© The Hill