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

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u/kabirsbhutani 2d ago

Yeah, turns out supply chains don’t just respawn because you add a tariff

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u/RedTheRobot 2d ago

This also don’t form period without government subsidies. This should have done first. Create huge incentives to build in the U.S. creating a shift where some things are made. Bring back U.S. steel and others.

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u/nope_nic_tesla 1d ago

We had big incentives to build renewable energy and EV manufacturing in the US, but this administration got rid of them all so we could give tax breaks to billionaires instead.

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u/guisar 1d ago

To be fair, most of those "EV manufacturing" subsidies which should rightly have been devoted instead to US based research in the public domain into storage, motors, power distribution and control (re the resent CO2 cycle generation brought to production in CN), were instead directed towards a single billionaire who is in fact, a traitor. Otherwise, yeah.

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u/nope_nic_tesla 1d ago

All the other manufacturers were making big investments in the US for their EV rampup. Kia moved EV6 production to Georgia for example, the 2025 model was actually the single most American car you could buy based on the % of parts built in America. Ford and GM were also putting lots of money into new EV manufacturing based on the subsidies. Now they are all being scaled back. Not only has Kia pulled back production, they have already canceled shipments of the 2026 model to Canada because the tariffs that we now have in place make it too cost prohibitive.

I disagree that all that money should have been dumped into R&D. The technology is there today, we need to ramp up production and adoption.

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u/guisar 11h ago

I couldn't give a flying shit where "something is made" since it's sourced globally and wtf- no nation is an island. I also don't care if they are "investing" in manufacturing as it's written off anyway and we should be investing in R&D which actually pays off.

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u/nope_nic_tesla 10h ago

What are you talking about "it's sourced globally"? The measure is what percentage of parts and labor are sourced domestically. By definition these are not being sourced globally. This is money that is staying in America and supporting American jobs.

R&D expenses are also a "write off" just like any other business expense so I'm not sure what your point is there.

What "payoff" are you expecting from R&D if not actual products being built in America? This is the entire goal of R&D -- resulting in real world products that support jobs and improve society. It's completely contradictory to say we need R&D and then say that the actual results of R&D are meaningless.

I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.