Trump’s 'Golden Age' killed another American company's factory in a red state

Reason Magazine reports President Donald Trump's tariffs and his war with Iran appears to have personally played a role in killing a profitable North Carolina tire factory.

“The Goodyear Rubber and Tire Co. announced this week that it would be shuttering its Fayetteville, North Carolina, plant that currently employs more than 1,700 workers,” reports Reason, before analyzing company reports to sort through the reasons.

“Translating … P.R.-speak a bit easier when you look at what company executives have been telling investors,” said Eric Boehm. “Goodyear lost $249 million during the first three months of the year — after earning a $115 million profit during the same three months last year, just prior to Trump's tariffs being announced. Along with that announcement, CEO Mark Stewart said that "higher raw material costs" due to the war would force Goodyear to take "meaningful actions to strengthen our cost structure. The 1,700 employees in Fayetteville would appear to be on the receiving end of that action — and for them, it certainly will be meaningful.”

Boehm said Trump’s tariffs delivered another significant blow. Company reps say it is expecting to receive $46 million in refunds after the Supreme Court ruled Trump's "emergency" tariffs to be unlawful. But even with that refund, Goodyear's CFO Christina Zamarro said on a recent earnings call that inflation and tariffs would contribute to economic headwinds that could total a $420 million loss over the full year.

“Simply put: you can't make tires without rubber, and it is impossible to buy rubber that isn't imported — because rubber trees do not grow in the United States,” said Boehm. “That means American tire companies import rubber from places like Thailand [which] exports a lot of … excess rubber to other parts of the world, including the United States.”

But Trump sees other countries with a surplus of rubber production as a threat to be targeted with tariffs, Boehm said. In March, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative claimed that Thailand's "trade surplus in sectors such as … rubber" was grounds for slapping higher tariffs on those imports.

It was a wooden-headed move considering tariffs on natural rubber won't bring rubber-tree plantation jobs to Minnesota or North Carolina, wrote Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. Trade Representative.

“But will raise costs and reduce sales for every U.S. manufacturer of airplane and truck tires, vibration dampers in bridges, specialized medical equipment, and so on,” Gresser said.

After Trump's tariffs were announced last year, Boehm said trade publications like Rubber World warned that consumers would face higher prices on both foreign-made and American-made tires.

Apparently, nobody at the White House was listening, and 1,700 red-state voters are feeling the results.

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