White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Friday on Newsmax that a surge in factory investment and hiring backs up President Donald Trump’s decision to put manufacturing at the center of his midterm campaign message, and he complained that most news outlets are ignoring it.

“Manufacturing renaissance is well underway here in the great United States of America,” Navarro said on “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”

Navarro, the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, was asked about a shift in Trump’s campaign message in recent days.

He described the administration’s approach as “a one-two punch.”

“We’ve got tariffs and the tax cuts for building factories, bringing in an enormous amount of investment to build factories,” he said. “And so the one-two punch there is construction jobs at the beginning and then manufacturing jobs.”

Navarro pointed to the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, which he called “the gold standard,” saying it “has been trending strongly upward for about eight months now.”

The index registered 54.5% in September, its ninth straight month above the 50% mark that signals expansion, according to the institute’s report released Thursday. The report also showed raw materials prices rising for the 24th consecutive month.

Navarro said the country “lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs during the last two years of the Biden regime,” adding, “We clearly turned that around.”

He cited two events from Trump’s week as evidence. Trump toured a Peterbilt truck plant in Denton, Texas, on Thursday. On Monday, he announced from the Oval Office a $15 billion steel mill planned for Lee County, Iowa.

“Peterbilt makes those big tractor-trailer things that bring us our groceries and everything else,” Navarro said. He described the Iowa project as “a totally integrated modern steel mill” and said, “That’s going to create all sorts of jobs.”

The mill is to be built by Mesabi Metallics, which is owned by India-based Essar Group, and is expected to employ 1,750 people, with production starting in 2030, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

Democrats in the state have questioned what tax incentives may be involved and have criticized Trump’s tariffs as driving up costs.

Navarro said the administration’s record on manufacturing is getting little attention.

“It’s unfortunate that other than a few commentators like yourself … nobody wants to talk about that leading into the election because most of the folks in the media really want to just bury us,” he told Schmitt.

The midterm elections are Nov. 3.