Flying under the radar of the legacy media, which does not like to report good economic news while Donald Trump is president, there is a massive industrial renaissance underway in the United States. (RELATED: The Productivity Boom Economists Didn’t See Coming) Pretty much every mass-market auto manufacturer is committing to new U.S. plants — or major expansions — in an effort to avoid tariffs and to be able to manufacture domestically most of the vehicles they sell in the United States. Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes, and Toyota have all announced major construction projects in recent months, which will pour tens of billions of dollars into the economy. After the construction is done, those projects will then create tens of thousands of new direct jobs. Wherever new auto plants have sprung up, a great deal of economic prosperity has followed, as new suppliers emerge, as well as suppliers to those suppliers, and so forth. This will now be amplified as the inflow of more capital recirculates throughout the economy, where it was once shipped offshore. Of course, it’s not just auto companies that are re-shoring manufacturing; the industrial renaissance is across all industries. We have recently moved into a golden era for trucking companies. Trucking has always been an economic bellwether, with the volume of goods being shipped declining during down times and increasing during economic expansions. Irrespective of the crackdown on foreign drivers who should not have been issued commercial driver’s licenses, the absolute volume of freight being transported by trucks is surging right now. (RELATED: Will Congress Keep on Trucking?) Rail is also seeing strong growth. As recently documented at Freightwaves, rail car loads in Q1 2026 are up 4.2 percent year-over-year. It’s the strongest first-quarter performance since 2019, suggesting that the improvement in rail volumes is not a temporary blip but rather a sustained shift in underlying economic activity. Diving deeper, the trends involving specific companies that serve as bellwethers of American industrial activity are showing very strong growth, along with a growing book of orders to be fulfilled. Caterpillar is a manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, and has shown to be a highly cyclical company. When its sales are booming, so is the economy. Right now, its sales are booming. Caterpillar’s most recent quarterly results show revenue up a whopping 19 percent year over year. But most impressive, its “backlog” (e.g., its order bank) as of Dec. 31, 2025, was a record $51 billion, which was up 70 percent from $30 billion at the prior year-end. Of course, Caterpillar’s exploding sales mean tremendous growth for its suppliers, and because of tariffs, Caterpillar is heavily incentivized to use U.S. suppliers. Eaton is a technology components business that is also seeing very rapid growth. Eaton’s most recent quarterly revenue was an all-time record, up 13 percent year-over-year. Perhaps more telling, its backlog is now at a record $20 billion, up 25 percent. At the raw material level, companies such as Vulcan Materials and Martin Marietta Materials have seen very strong growth since the middle of 2025. I could keep going. None of these companies is a software company selling a digital product. These companies’ products are tangible industrial goods that are used for traditional industrial purposes. In fact, even US Steel is expanding capacity at its U.S. mills. It was just announced a few days ago that its Gary, Ind., tin mill plant will be restarted, providing 225 new jobs at this plant, which had been idled since 2022. As if all this news wasn’t good enough, it gets even better. The fuel costs for America’s industrial revival are falling. Natural gas is the fuel that drives American industry. Unlike petroleum prices, which have risen since the start of the war in Iran, natural gas prices are trending downward. This is because the U.S. is awash in natural gas, and under the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuels agenda, it is being extracted in record volumes. Per the U.S. Department of Energy, at an average March 2026 price of $3.04 per MMBtu, the price of natural gas is down 29 percent since the beginning of the year, and down 26 percent year-over-year. By the middle of April 2026, the price had dropped even lower, slipping under $2.80 per MMBtu. (RELATED: Drill, Baby, Geopolitics: Now It’s a Matter of National Security) The media will not stop trying to spin economic news as being bad for President Trump, but the simple fact is that his effort to re-shore American industry is proving wildly successful. The explosive industrial growth in the U.S. and the cheap natural gas to fuel it have put us in a position for a period of remarkable economic growth and job creation. READ MORE from Buck Throckmorton: Texas and Florida Shatter the ABA’s Gatekeeping Power Shipping Interruption in Persian Gulf Is Yet Another Reminder of the Risks of Offshoring Media Dishonestly Blames Rising Sea Levels for Houses Lost to Surf in North Carolina’s Outer Banks