Posted on 09/15/2019 8:29:01 PM PDT by rktman
The moment usually comes during Greg Petras’s commute through the rolling hills and cornfields of southern Wisconsin. Somewhere between his home near Madison and the factory he runs on the edge of the small town of Brodhead, the news will turn to the trade wars and Donald Trump will again claim that China is bearing the cost of his tariffs. That’s when Petras loses it.
“It’s just an outright lie, and he knows it,” says Petras, president of Kuhn North America, which employs some 600 people at its farm-equipment factory in Wisconsin. For Kuhn, Trump’s trade war has produced a toxic mix of rising costs and falling revenues. “You’re slamming your fist on the steering wheel and saying ‘Why would you tell people this?’”
About 250 Kuhn employees spent the Labor Day holiday caught in a two-week furlough, and they’re facing another in early October. A shrinking order book means Kuhn is cutting costs and slashing production as Petras and his managers peer out at a U.S. economy that looks far bleaker from the swing-state heartland than it does in either the White House or on Wall Street.
The company’s circus-themed summer picnic survived but weekend shifts are gone. A plant that just four years ago was humming along to a record $400 million in sales together with a sister plant in Kansas is running at 50% capacity. The five-year-old, $11 million paint shop that coats the company’s manure spreaders and livestock feeders in a distinctive “Kuhn Red” is at 39% capacity. Plans for a new $4 million research and development building are on hold. “We’ll do it someday,” Petras says. “We just need things to be going in a better direction.”
(Excerpt) Read more at discussionist.com ...
I’d guess that this guy’s customers were the regional soybean farmers. China had placed retaliatory tariffs on Soybeans (which I hear have recently been lifted).
With any war there are casualties, and trade wars are no different. You ride them out with the expectation of better days at the end.
I, for one, wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if there were a depression in 2020, I’d still vote for Trump. These “economy fears” are nothing more than the fake news brainwashing the American public.
You must be forgetting that the demokkkommies have stated they will choose truth over facts so............ Guess I needed an ‘/s’ huh. I believe we’ve had 18 quarters of upward movement. But the lames and anti Trump economists will make up some “truth” to put out.
A billboard on one of the highways nears us has an ad for Sherwin-Williams for CDL folks with a min yearly of $84,000 with the opportunity to make more if you want to. And benefits.
Nannie bloomers ain’t accepted or I would have gone straight there. But yeah, a DuckDuckgo search had the exact same article in several different places.
“.... brainwashing the American public.” Exactly. Sadly there are those that will buy it lock stock and barrel.
American cities subject to the continuous Africanization by democrat politicans have put them in continuous recession, depression.
Deetroit died, Baltinore is dead. Philadepphia is near deatrh and Chicago is killing its self every Saturday night.
It shocks me that the Democrats will work for a recession to destroy millions of citizens financially.
Well 2-3 more rate cuts from the Fed will cure the slowdown. Trump is not going to let Jay Powell run us on the rocks. And believe me he wants to do just that.
And today the UAW goes on strike against GM, which of course is just a coincidence, but (like the Fed's interest rate hikes) I guarantee you this would not have gone forward if Hitlery™ was in office ...
Not feeling it in Washington State, if anything, there is so much work and construction that that contractors are offering extremely high prices or not even bidding because they are booked solid.
Same in Reno with housing subs. Can’t find enough.
Exactly what first came to mind... and then our schools no longer educate but rather indoctrinate.
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