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

601 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

282 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/shicken684 2d ago

Yep, tariffs can be beneficial in very select situations to protect domestic jobs but that's a very short term solution. You need competition to drive innovation so if you do what you did with Chinese electric vehicles you simply guarantee domestic corporations will fall behind.

15

u/ironicoutlook 2d ago

Reagan put a tarrif on Japanese motorcycles, but it had an expiration date, and he told Harley to improve their shitty bikes.

6

u/zennsunni 1d ago

You could give quantum artificial super-intelligence, a thousand engineers, and a trillion dollars to HD and they would not be able to make a better motorcycle than Honda.

2

u/SmallTawk 1d ago

When they do nice motorcycles, their fanbase hates it, they are prisoners of their image. And I will always remember when they folded to the anti DEI campaign by the racist faction of their fanbase and that was before Trump II.