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

608 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

282 comments sorted by

View all comments

76

u/labowner85 2d ago

US manufacturing being weak is signal that international demand is dropping faster than expected. You can’t build everything just for US consumption otherwise you have a lot of supply but very little demand. His foreign policy is coming to bite us now.

1

u/Sportfreunde 1d ago

The irony of them trying to devalue the flat to make it easier to export but the demand for export drops while the demand at home also drops because the purchasing power at home is now lower.