When President Donald Trump has talked about the need for higher tariffs on imports of foreign goods because of a decline in American manufacturing, he has often made the claim that “90,000 plants and factories” in the U.S. closed after the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico took effect in 1994. But that figure is questionable, and experts say other factors, such as automation, had more to do with the large decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs than trade.

Data from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics database show that there was a decrease of about 74,000 “manufacturing establishments” in the U.S. between 1995, the peak year for manufacturing after NAFTA went into effect, and 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. Furthermore, about one-quarter of the decline during that nearly three-decade period was in establishments with four or fewer employees — so it’s unclear how many of those truly count as a manufacturing factory or plant. For example, some small-business manufacturers make products while working out of their own homes.