Manufacturers Say Trump Has Made Opening U.S. Factories Impossible

[Eugene]

Source: The New Republic

Manufacturers Say Trump Has Made Opening U.S. Factories Impossible

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
Fri, May 9, 2025 at 12:03 PM AST 2 min read

The Trump administration’s tariff scheme appears less and less likely to bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S. shores.

Businesses across the country are crunching the numbers and realizing that, despite Donald Trump’s insistence, they can’t balance out his tariff hikes across the supply chain.

“Some manufacturers who had plans to open factories in the country say the new duties are only adding to the significant obstacles they already faced,” Bloomberg reported Friday.

That’s because the supply chain to produce those goods in the United States simply isn’t there, requiring companies to import raw materials and factory equipment—which Trump’s tariffs have made unaffordable—from abroad.

And Trump’s unpredictable approach ...

-snip-

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/manufacturers-trump-made-opening-u-160343062.html

[riversedge]

1. So, it seems #TrumpsTariffs have led to another problem. Good work Donny!

[DENVERPOPS]

6. AND PARTICULARLY

to another Major backer of Trump and Republicans........CORPORATIONS !!!!!!!!!!

You F'ing Idiot Corporations that put him and his CABAL in office, by hook or by crook are gonna get screwed royally.
And you were all too stupid and short sighted to realize where your endorsement and donations to them would end up.......
Trump and his CABAL have already started throwing their Trumphumping idiot voters under the bus......I guess they didn't understand, when he was doing his rallies what he was telling them when he said....."vote for me this one last time, and you will never have to vote again" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I laugh when he constantly, anymore, raises his fist to his TrumpHumpers and on video in Fox News.....
All he has to do in the future is do that raised fist, with his fingers extended..........

[RockRaven]

2. "And Trump's unpredictable approach..." *cough cough*

I've been banging that drum from the beginning of this trade war/recession of choice.

It is The Convicted Felon personally, his decision-making process specifically, which prevents anyone of sense from investing a cent in a new manufacturing concern whose success/failure relies upon a tariff's existence or lack thereof.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. It's never been about manufacturing. ...

It's always been about packing the US Treasury with our cash and robbery.

I've been trying to explain this for months.

[Wiz Imp]

4. Manufacturing Jobs Created

Under Trump (Jan 2017 - Jan 2021) = -189,000

Under Biden (Jan 2021 - Jan 2025) = +610,000

Under Obama (Second Term) (Jan 2013 - Jan 2017) = +392,000 (First term was -590,000 because of the after effects of the Great Recession)

Under G. W. Bush = -4,553,000

Under G.H.W. Bush = -1,267,000

Under Reagan = -582,000

I see a pattern..............

[groundloop]

5. I spent 15 years at a company which manufactured fiber optic cable......

Every single bit of the manufacturing equipment we used came from Europe. The company bean counters would have gladly bought American equipment if it was available and of equal quality, but it just didn't exist.

[patphil]

7. Even with a favorable financial environment, it could take years to build, equip, staff, and produce goods.

This assumes a stable political environment that doesn't mess things up by our dear leader issuing executive orders that change the playing field during the process.
On the other hand, with government agencies gutted, the regulatory lead time would probably be less.
And then there's government aid. Will it be there? Probably not. Some massive ventures rely on a certain amount of public funding to make it happen. There has to be an acceptable ROI.
Ultimately, it's really all about how safe companies feel when it comes to committing huge sums of money to long term projects. Trump's presidency doesn't exactly engender warm fuzzies in these people.

[orangecrush]

8. ....

[markodochartaigh]

9. It's difficult to believe

that the future of the US workforce may be the TikTok generation working in prisons for $1.50/hr to produce cheap plastic goods for export. But if we don't root out authoritarianism I think that it might be possible.

Look at what happened to Argentina between the late 1800's when it had so much promise and today.

[dchill]

10. Congrats, Putin!

[lonely bird]

11. Potentially...

The only manufacturing “coming back” will be low tech and low wage. High tech does not produce the numbers of jobs that general manufacturing as exemplified by the automotive business did before automation and offshoring.

[Hornedfrog2000]

12. Why the media

Isnt asking who, and how these tariffs will be collected is beyond me. Its obvious they are trying to consolidate our tax dollars, hoard money and then steal it.

They also know this makes the dollar weak, so where do they dump their dollars which are becoming weaker?

[jmowreader]

13. Not only that...

Right now the trend in manufacturing is the lights-out factory - everything done by machines.

In 2009 I picked up a load of beer from Anheuser-Busch’s Baldwinsville, NY, brewery. After they loaded my trailer I had to go into Shipping for my paperwork. In this massive room they had rack upon rack of beer on pallets, automated forklifts, and one person who had two jobs: prepare shipping documents and fix any machine that broke down. The beer distributors would send their orders to St. Louis via Electronic Data Interchange. A-B’s mainframe would go through it and decide how many of their 10 breweries would take the order - because this company makes so many products every brewery has a different product mix. You might get part of it from Baldwinsville, part from Newark, NJ, part from St. Louis… Okay, so you need product from Baldwinsville. This facility gets EDI from STL. Their computer creates a pick list and sends it to a forklift, which pulls the order and loads it on the trailer. These machines don’t even need human help to charge - when their batteries get low enough they back into a charging bay and right into the connector.

I took a look at this and asked the shipper if the Teamsters Union (the Teamsters are the Union controlling this plant) was okay with this. “The Teamsters set this up. They were able to move their people into higher-paying jobs inside the brewery with this system.”

Totally automated factories are what we’ll get if they come back to the US. Rather than having hundreds or thousands of workers screwing little screws into iPhones, you’ll have rows of ABB or FANUC robots doing it and one or two people with toolboxes in case one of them stops working.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. The point all along was to ruin the economy and explode the budget deficit!

If Trump can force Americans to buy American-made goods that cost three times as much, Americans will be bankrupt too!

If the tariff program achieves its goals, GWB will be a Mission Accomplished midget!!!