GM was cutting jobs and kicking around restructuring plans before Trump even took office. Trump's stupid double digital tariffs aren't helping anything, but GM has been struggling for awhile.
GMs job cuts have almost nothing to do with the tariffs. It has to do with an automotive sales market that is at the end of its longest continuous rise in us history combined with increasing competition from japanese and korean manufacturers in the small car segment. Interesting enough, if the US had a flatter trade balance with the world (what Trump is combating with tariffs) GM would likely be in a better position to keep these plants open.
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It's much easier to blame the bad orange man though.
Furthermore the "economic retaliations" that Trump is threatening to pull are simply to removed the government subsidies that Bush put in place to help bail out GM for the 25 years of mismanagement that lead up to their 08' bankruptcy.
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Basically Trump is threatening to stop spending your money to support General Motors.
Bush didn’t bail out GM. Obama administration basically helped create a new GM that kept all of the assets of the original GM and all the debt was left to the old GM. All of my GM stock from before Obama’s massive corporate welfare program is now listed as NV (no value). The new GM loses money on every EV sold and is owned in (massive) part by the UAW. GM is a victim of their own mismanagement, they spent too much money making vehicles that are either unprofitable or uncompetitive or undesirable or all three. The tariffs were a partial fail in that they are on raw materials and not finished goods, these domestic and foreign cars built here are subject to more import tariff on the components than foreign cars built in Europe or Asia. I’m disgusted that we taxpayers were forced to give so much money to GM and as investors we were forced to forgive even more in GM debt so they could squander it and land themselves back in peril in less than ten years. Buy a Ford, let GM die.
-He might pardon his ol’ buddy Manafort
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It's much easier to blame the bad orange man though.
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Basically Trump is threatening to stop spending your money to support General Motors.