https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-america-first-corporate-graveyard-trump-economy

The stupidity of Trump and American voters, frankly:

«Throughout each of his presidential campaigns, Trump promised a manufacturing renaissance. This was never likely to happen, despite bipartisan nostalgia for a bygone U.S. manufacturing era. That’s largely because we are now a services-based economy. But a resurgence was especially unlikely given Trump’s specific brand of America First policies, which includes raising costs of the inputs that U.S. manufacturers buy while also closing off export markets where these same U.S. manufacturers hope to sell their products.

The result: There are approximately 80,000 fewer manufacturing jobs today than there were when Trump took office last year. Not coincidentally, steel prices here in the United States are about 40 percent higher than those in Western Europe. The increase in corporate bankruptcies last year was driven largely by industrial firms grappling with tariffs.

The sweeping Trump tariffs have been painful enough. But lately, they have been coupled with new stressors resulting from his war with Iran.

For example, aluminum prices are nearly double what they were a year ago, thanks to a combination of Trump’s tariffs; a shutdown at a U.S. aluminum supplier; and the closure of one of the world’s largest aluminum smelters, located near Abu Dhabi, which was struck by an Iranian missile.

This has hit auto companies especially hard. In an earnings call last week, Ford said it expected its commodity costs this year to reach $2 billion, twice its previous projection, primarily because of rising aluminum prices.

Other manufacturers are feeling the pinch, too: In its own earnings filing today, Whirlpool warned that the Iran war had “resulted in recession-level industry decline in the U.S.” As trade nerds may recall: Whirlpool was one of the very first beneficiaries of Trump’s trade wars in his first term, through his global washing-machine tariffs. The company and its workers initially celebrated—but then they were beset by a series of other “America First” policies (including those metal tariffs).»