Trump team scrambles after report he’s killing manufacturing jobs
Trump team scrambles after report he’s killing manufacturing jobs
The labor market is slowing, but it’s all good news in the White House.
The U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, a slight decline from April, according to a jobs report released Friday. The unemployment rate remained at 4.2 percent, still within the ballpark of historic lows reached in 2023, when the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent—the lowest it had been in more than five decades. But within the folds of the report hid a major red flag for Donald Trump’s agenda: The U.S. is still bleeding manufacturing jobs.
But even the president’s favorite conservative network couldn’t hide its dismay at the slight manufacturing downturn.
“Now, 8,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in May. That’s not what you wanted to see,” said Fox Business host Stuart Varney.
I know more were lost in June. My company, in a tariff response, is moving US jobs out because none of our global customers want to pay said tariffs, so we're shrinking our us manufacturer operations and making other sites.
Edit: the tariffs to import the raw materials to actually make stuff is what costs my employer the most.
I work at a factory in Canada. We just got a huge contract from European customers and we've been told we're running more machines on 24/7 shifts to meet demand and hiring 50 new staff to do it. The clients switched from producing in the US to avoid costs associated with the trade war.
Putting tariffs on raw materials and natural resources you don't have domestically is possibly the dumbest thing a politician could do.
I think in most cases we do technically have them domestically, but we're rightfully unwilling to strip-mine ourselves and wreck the landscape to extract them. On the other hand, Trump, with his rapist mentality, is perfectly happy to force that to happen, will of the public be damned.
Companies with warehouses and facilities in multiple countries are all sitting pretty. In fact some are expanding quickly
I have been working for and by myself as a machinist for the last 15 years. The first round of steel tariffs hurt a lot, but I was able to pull through just barely. Now, I am losing every contract I've got when they expire (which is soon) and as a small fish I have almost no bargaining power on bids for jobs. I am likely going to have to shutter the business and sell all the equipment.
Almost like that was part of the plan
U mean asking manufacturers to pay MORE to produce in America encourages them to move production to other countries? You’re kidding!
It's worse than that.
Let's say I want to open a widget factory in America because of the tariffs. Sure, I can avoid the tariffs on the widgets themselves by making them here, but there's a big problem...
What about the tariffs on the materials needed to make them?
So Trump wants to strong-arm a minerals deal with some country via a protection racket only to... tariff them?
Jesus Christ.
Unironically, depending on how the supply chain is arranged for your industry, it may actually be cheaper to move your manufacturing off shore and eat the tariff once instead of getting nickeled and dimed for every single item you need to assemble on shore. Hell, Vietnam already figured out you can ship Chinese products through to America as grey imports and skim off the top.
It is hard for me to articulate just how fucking stupid all of this is. It's no small wonder how this guy bankrupted six casinos.
But hey, Art of the Deal, baby.
It is hard for me to articulate just how fucking stupid all of this is. It's no small wonder how this guy bankrupted six casinos.
I always assumed they were bankrupted on purpose as part of some sort of money laundering scheme, but you're bringing me around to the idea that it may actually have been sheer stupidity rather than crime.
This is exactly what some of the biggest manufacturers of cars in America are thinking of doing. They manufacture in America but a lot of the parts are imported and would cost them a fortune to import. It's cheaper to move factories to China, build the full part, and then ship it over because the tarrifs are higher on the individual tech parts inside the assembly than a finished product using those parts.
Unironically, depending on how the supply chain is arranged for your industry, it may actually be cheaper to move your manufacturing off shore and eat the tariff once instead of getting nickeled and dimed for every single item you need to assemble on shore.
And that's not even accounting for forecasting, which is still necessary in the stupid-frail JIT approach. Noone will want to sign a long-term supply contract when they could get screwed by sudden tarrifs and the JIT people have to rely on luck to avoid subjecting customers to sticker-price whiplash.
It's all just so fucking stupid.
Edit: Not sure what my auto-correct meant there. To be clear I was intending to state that JIT logistics is stupidly frail because it is unable to smooth out uncertainties in supply chains and a single distribution or price swing in a necessary component can result in the material costs of the product going so high that the business either has to sell at unpredictable prices, eat the difference, or set the base price higher and pocket the difference when favorable.
I don't disagree with your point, but except for electronics, and Italian marble America can make a lot of the materials themselves. The biggest problem is in many cases the price of labour in the US. And for complex things like cars you can't even move the entire supply chain even if you wanted to.
There was this guy who had a theory that there was nobody on earth who could make a microwave oven, turns out he was right: there are people who can know how to make a certain part of it and other people who knew about it's assembly nobody can create one start to finish. So imagine with more complex machines how difficult it'd be to bring all those skills and knowledge 'home' to America.
Lol, you entirely misunderstand the issue.
Americans lack the skills and machining of modern manufacturing. It's so expensive because they'd have to make buildings and teach skills that are already everywhere in China.
But sure, laugh like a fucking moron we're taking behind the world because we don't take care of workers or infrastructure.
Americans with those skills don't want to work for shit wages. I can show you plenty of electrician/engineer/mechanic job postings for sub 60k if you would like. I've spent two decades in mfg environments watching poor business decisions cripple the workforce and push any and all qualified individuals out.
Yes, it is easier to proceed assuming that I am a complete moron. Thanks :)
So asking manufacturers to pay more for parts that we can't produce here is good so that they can move to other countries?
Just to clarify, the United States already manufacturers a crap load of stuff. We are number two in the world with only China ahead of us.
I am not sure about other industry, but in the pharmaceutical industry, several companies decided immediately to set up more manufacturing sites in the US after the tariff threat. But I think it is because these companies are producing weight loss drugs, which is selling like hot cakes since last year, so I think they know that the huge sales will offset the manufacturing cost and tariffs. These weight loss drugs are new and the patent rights is good for 15-20 years. Some industries are just lucky they are insulated from the worst of tariff impositions, while others are not so much.
Industrial capital spending has never, ever been as low as it is right now, even during Covid. It's pretty much zero, because nobody has any intention of investing in any sort of industrial infrastructure in a complete clusterfuck of economic and trade policy. The chicken hasn't come close to roosting yet, give it another few months and watch the bloodbath.
They also gorged themselves on basically zero percent lending, used it for things along the lines of stock buybacks and now their equipment/supply chain is failing. Low corporate taxes mean there's no incentive to reinvest, certainly not upping wages.
Capitalism is a cancer that's running out of healthy cells.
And industrial capital takes a long time to realize. Speaking as an industrial engineer who's been involved in the process, it's a pain in the ass amount of time between us getting called in and floor workers getting called in. Once factories shutter it'll be years before theyre back online. And I don't see it happening under Trump.
How are you finding it for supply line on equipment for the floor, or do you see any of that side of the process? Because as far as I know, most of the machinery is not making it's way into the country from China and Europe because of tariffs, so even if you put up a building, you wouldn't be able to outfit it. If it is getting in, it's going to be prohibitively expensive to outfit a line.
I'm waiting for the beginning of July for the end of the tariff pause. Dow Jones will probably shed a few thousand points before Trump reacts by pausing them again or repealing them since he always chickens out. \
If Trump is going to wreck the fucking economy with his idiocy I might as well take a shot at profiting from it like all of the grifters in his administration.
Looks like they may need to destroy a few more government agencies that collect and distribute labor statistics. That will solve it.
Small businesses come and go, but lately I have seen a shit ton of small businesses disappear.
Every policy makes winners and losers. The current administrations policies are making a lot more losers than winners to enrich themselves. It is pure unfettered corruption.
A 2021 study by Oxford Economics and the U.S.-China Business Council concluded that the United States lost 245,000 jobs as a result of the Trump tariffs.
They're going to study these tariffs and detail how they fucked America and by the time Republicans do something similar nobody will ever, EVER, bring this up again.
Scrambles to do what? Buy or sell?
Just scrambles in place, like eggs.
Wasn't the alleged purpose of tariffs to bring manufacturing goods to America?