"America First" eats his children

Detroit / Washington. (rs) For Donald Trump, the issue of guilt was resolved quickly. General Motors (GM) just needed to put on the market a car that sells well in the US and stops production in China, said the US president shortly after the largest US automaker announced its plans Savings of one billion dollars to reporters. He was not satisfied with the group's decision and also told GM boss Mary Barra of a "hard call".

It is important for Trump that there is a culprit for the closure of several plants and the removal of every sixth GM job in North America. Because for the 72-year-old is already starting in 18 months, the election campaign for a second term in the White House, and for many voters, the ballot is probably also a vote on the promises of President "America First" that the president has actually implemented a. Trump had only visited it in July 2017 in Youngstown, a neighboring town of Lordstown, where, at present, the GM plant is turning off the lights. At that time, the president implored the workers not to move away from the structurally weak region of Ohio. All lost jobs would be brought to an end, he badured.

However, the fact that jobs are disappearing again in Rustbelt, the industrial region of the northeastern United States that has been fighting for many years against emigration and the closure of factories, can not be attributed exclusively to an erroneous model policy that constitutes the greatest love of American buyers for the big pickers -Rucks has not sufficiently taken into account.

New tariffs against China
Thus, Barra justified the cancellation of 15,000 jobs not only with GM's planned electric offensive and declining limo sales, but also with the latest significant increase in costs. As a precaution, she gave no precise breakdown, but there is little doubt about what GM's boss means by that. Like other US automakers, who also depend on a highly internationalized supply chain, GM has also been affected by Trump's China-led trade war in recent months. In the last quarter alone, the company had to absorb $ 300 million of additional costs from Trump's punitive duties on steel and aluminum imports. And in July, the automaker warned the US Department of Commerce that import duties could eventually lead to a "smaller GM".