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+--- Thread: Trump's ever-changing tariff policies stalling US plant expansions? (panic network) (/thread-21234.html)
Trump's ever-changing tariff policies stalling US plant expansions? (panic network) - C C - Sep 1, 2026
PETER ZEIHAN (geopolitics)
https://youtu.be/T8HAsylhBmI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: This really is getting into a no-man's-land when it comes to the future of North American manufacturing. Keep in mind that the United States needs to at least double the size of its industrial plants simply to have access to the products it's going to lose as deglobalization really kicks in. And doing that without our North American partners means we actually have to increase it further...
[...] At the same time, the Trump administration keeps changing policies. ... So no one wants to invest in North American and especially US manufacturing because the rules of the game keep changing.
[...] One of the things that we've seen during the Trump administration is that industrial construction spending has dropped every single month of this administration...
[...] We're now at the point where the business community's trust in the Trump administration has basically evaporated completely. They will not start investing in new plants until such time as they know what the real rules of the game are.
This is unambiguously horrible news for the US economy long-term. Because it's raising the very real possibility that not only will we not have the replacement product supply chains in place when deglobalization hits hard in the next couple of years, but we won't even be able to be functional with where we were 2 years ago.
And the industries that are going to get hit hardest by that, by far, are agriculture, because their primary customers are Canada and Mexico. And automotive manufacturing, because the average part that is in an American-crafted vehicle crosses the border to Mexico and Canada multiple times overall. Anything going to Canada is now facing potentially compounding tariffs. And if you happen to be headquartered in Detroit and producing cars in Michigan or the northern tier of the Midwest, you're talking about parts crossing maybe seven times...
Trade war revival: Trump, Canada, and tariffs ... https://youtu.be/T8HAsylhBmI