I have spent my career in manufacturing, the last two decades in hard goods (metal products, automotive, auto components, refinery / oil equipment). When Trump came into office, I heard a lot about how he was going to really change our business. (I’m in Texas, so you can guess it’s all good). Well, he did. With the imposition of tariffs, suddenly our profitability dived, and we could not get materials in that we needed to meet orders. The company I was with used a grade of stainless steel and high carbon steel which could only be sourced offshore as no domestic mills made the product we needed. Not only did the cost of materials spike, but lead times went from 30 - 45 days up to six months or more. Absolutely destroyed us. Meantime, our customers didn’t want to reopen purchase orders and pay more, and we really had no leverage. End story, we had to lay off manufacturing and sales personnel until we could get materials in stock, then we had to incur lots of overtime to get product out the door.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Several of our competitors were importing completed assemblies from China, and since they weren’t covered under the metals tariffs, they could drastically undercut us. Sucked to be us, but at least the Donald created new manufacturing jobs – in China.
