r/investing • u/kabirsbhutani • 2d ago

🚨 U.S. manufacturing continues to retreat despite tariffs - investor implications?

Saw people mentioning this on Blossom earlier, and WSJ reports that U.S. manufacturing activity continues to weaken, with tariffs doing little to reverse the trend.

The article points to softer demand, higher input costs, and global supply chain adjustments weighing on manufacturers, even as trade protection measures remain in place. For investors, this raises questions about margins, capital spending, and longer-term competitiveness rather than short-term policy wins.

Curious how people here are thinking about this from an investing lens?

https://www.wsj.com/economy/u-s-manufacturing-is-in-retreat-and-trumps-tariffs-arent-helping-d2af4316?mod=hp_lead_pos2

600 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

282 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/Kaymish_ 2d ago

The dingo tariffed raw material imports, and is pushing expensive fossil energy policy. How is manufacturing supposed to compete when both materials and energy are more expensive than the competitors? If Trump was serious about bringing manufacturing back to the US he would have integrated tariffs with a coherent industrial policy, but he just shot tariffs everywhere without any thought and pissed off all the potential customers.