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General Motors (GM) plans to expand production at one of its plants in Indiana thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign-made cars. On Wednesday evening, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on all foreign-made cars to protect the nation’s auto industry from unfair trade competition. GM executives said they will be increasing production of light-duty trucks at the automaker’s Fort Wayne Assembly Plant in Indiana, according to an exclusive report by Reuters on Thursday.

British engineering giant Rolls-Royce is reportedly preparing to increase manufacturing production in the United States to avoid tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. London’s Daily Telegraph reported that Rolls-Royce is currently drafting contingency plans to avoid the impact of trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration. The plans are said to include ramping up production in America and hiring more workers in the United States. According to the report, the aerospace and defence company is considering shifting production from countries impacted by the trade war, such as China, Canada, and Mexico, where it currently has around 6,000 workers.

German luxury auto manufacturer Audi said it is considering moving car production to the United States to avoid tariffs from the Trump administration. Volkswagen’s subsidiary Audi brand said this week that it is examining various long-term strategies, including potentially shifting production to America, to deal with President Donald Trump’s restrictions on foreign imports. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner said that the company is “currently assessing various scenarios for additional localization in North America – among other things, to be closer to the needs of local customers and to make ourselves more resilient to global economic uncertainties.”

The factory sector came roaring back in President Trump’s first full month in office. Industrial production in the United States surged in February, rising 0.7 percent, more than triple the 0.2 percent increase economists had expected. The latest data from the Federal Reserve marks a significant expansion in industrial activity, with total output reaching its highest level on record. Manufacturing output, which accounts for roughly three-fourths of total industrial production, rose 0.9 percent, the largest monthly gain in a year. A particularly notable driver of February’s expansion was the auto sector, where motor vehicle and parts production jumped 8.5 percent....

President Donald Trump on Saturday signed two executive orders that call for immediately expanding American lumber production and addressing lumber imports' threat to national security. The orders aim to update guidance on production, streamline permitting, and assess possible risks that imports pose to national security. A White House official told Fox News the president identified a crisis in both supply and demand in an industry the U.S. should be entirely self-sufficient in. The executive order notes that the production of timber, lumber, paper, bioenergy, and other wood products is crucial for Americans in construction and energy production. Recent disasters, the...

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia aim to boost American automobile production to avoid President Donald Trump’s planned 25 percent auto tariff, according to a report. Trump on Tuesday said the tariff rates on auto imports will be “in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” with more details to come in early April. He noted that he will give auto manufacturers time to avoid the tariff. “If they have a plant and factory here, there will be no tariff,” the 47th president remarked.

On Tuesday, the Texas Railroad Commission unanimously approved new environmental rules for the state’s oil and gas industry. The new state rules are expected to impose new costs and make the state’s oil and gas industry less productive in 2025, even as the incoming Trump administration promises to cut such red tape nationally. All three commissioners are Republicans, elected statewide to staggered six-year terms, but the new rules were crafted to benefit the environmental lobby rather than the state’s economy. Their new rule was proposed under the pretense of addressing pollution and safety issues, which advocates and opponents alike said...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has lifted lightning restrictions for the most widely used version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, allowing the Lockheed Martin jet to fly in thunderstorms for the first time since 2020, Breaking Defense has learned. The Defense Department formally lifted the restrictions on March 19 after devising a hardware and software fix for the lightning protection system used aboard the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing variant, JPO spokesman Russ Goemaere said in response to a press inquiry. The F-35A had been prohibited from flying within 25 miles of lightning since June 2020, when damaged tubes were...

Although cocaine is consumed in every part of the world, its base, the coca plant, is mainly cultivated in three Latin American countries: Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. The latter made headlines in the fall of 2023 due to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claiming that the area used for coca crop in 2022 grew to 230,000 hectares, a 13 percent increase compared to 2021, according to Reuters reporting. As our chart shows, this further cements Colombia's spot as the top coca producer in the world.According to figures by UNODC and the Peruvian...

Texas dominates U.S. oil production, contributing 42.6% of the total output, mainly due to the Permian Basin.New Mexico has seen dramatic 190% increase in oil production over the past five years, becoming the second-leading oil producer in the U.S.California faces a 30.7% reduction in oil production over the past five years, largely due to political and geological challenges.U.S. oil production has increased by 21% over the past five years. According to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), earlier this month U.S. oil producers set a new annual production record.This increase is being driven by a surge of production in...

'The White House simply ignores energy realities by once again limiting US energy production opportunities,' .. The Biden administration on Friday finalized a plan to dramatically curb the number of offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years as it continues to aggressively push green energy development. The Department of the Interior's (DOI) five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program schedules just three Gulf of Mexico lease sales through 2029, marking the fewest number of sales ever included in such a plan, which the agency is mandated to issue periodically. According to the DOI, holding the sales...

Every day, people across the world wake up to news about climate change affecting their lives. With the seeming randomness of a roulette wheel, the doomsday clique of the climate world daily selects a fresh topic to sow seeds of anxiety among the populace. Popular things easily recognized — even cherished — by people are continually identified as being at risk of being damaged or destroyed by climate change. Coffee, for example, is a commodity experiencing a surge in popularity, and there are no prizes for guessing what climate doomsayers are saying now. Yes, coffee is now said to be...

The American Plant Food Corporation’s fertilizer plant in Bartlett, Texas, near Round Rock, reportedly caught fire around 8:30 p.m. on August 20th. The plant has since burned to the ground.The Bartlett Volunteer Fire Department received a call to come put it out at 9901 North Highway 95. The fertilizer plant is said “vital to the local community” and to Texas state.Because of voluminous hazardous and highly flammable chemicals at the plant, firefighters decided it was best to not try to extinguish the flames with water as they typically would for other types of fires. “Hazard crews were on site all...

Well, its now August 2023 and US Industrial Production for July increased … to 2007 levels. This comes after the massive spending out of Washington DC and massive Federal Rerserve stimulus. Is that all there is?? As I said a couple of days ago, the Obama/Biden economic model is a Soviet/Chinese Communist Party (CCP) style of COMMAND economics, not free market DEMAND economics. As if dimwitted Mean Joe Biden has a clue.

Yesterday, Telsa released production and delivery numbers for the 2nd quarter. Wall Street had been expecting a pretty good result but the company beat those estimates by quite a bit.For the quarter, Tesla reported global production of 479,700 units with deliveries of 466,140. The delivery figure easily topped Wall Street consensus estimates of 448,599 units, as well as the prior quarter’s total of 422,875. Both production and delivery totals for the second quarter were all-time records for Tesla.In case that wasn’t clear, a survey of Wall Street analysts estimated the delivery number this quarter would 448,599 and the actual number...

I was hoping that the week of July 4th would start off with fireworks, but we got bad news about the economy. US factory activity contracted for an eighth month in June, slipping to the weakest level in more than three years as production, employment and input prices retreated. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing gauge fell to 46, the weakest since May 2020, from 46.9 a month earlier, according to data released Monday. The current stretch of readings below 50, which indicates shrinking activity, is the longest since 2008-2009. The decline in the ISM production gauge, which also stands...

EXCERPTS:If you want to believe America is still the "arsenal of democracy" that Franklin Roosevelt described in 1940, you might want to avoid looking too closely at the U.S. manufacturing sector. China has become the world's premier industrial power, greatly out-producing the United States in everything from steel to smartphones. Germany's machine-tool industry outshines our own. No U.S. shipyard has built a commercial ship destined for international commerce in decades. I toured the last remaining tank plant in America, located in Lima, Ohio. General Dynamics, a donor to my think tank and consulting client, flew me there to see where...

“One day in January, I caught myself mumbling the ‘Ooga Chaka’ chant from Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked on a Feeling” in rhythm with the Beatles’ “Birthday,” and marveled at how well they fit together. I tried it with other songs and realized I could have some on-air fun with it.” Al, who goes by Alan Darsen on air, frequently devotes time on his show to novelty holidays like National Buy a Cupcake Day. “I decided it was time to invent a holiday of our own. So I edited together nine entire songs with the chant, declared January 23 as National Ooga...

After reporting last week that production volume had spooled up at Tesla's new Germany plant, this week we are learning that the Tesla production expansion continues: this time to Mexico.The company is slated to build a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico, it was reported by Bloomberg this week. The announcement comes after weeks of guessing over where the U.S. based EV company would expand its reach next. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced on Wednesday that the facility would help Mexico "build on the millions of combustion-engine vehicles the country already supplies to the US every year," according to Bloomberg....

A cyberattack earlier this month forced produce giant Dole to temporarily shut down production plants in North America and halt food shipments to grocery stores, according to a company memo about the incident obtained by CNN. The previously unreported hack — which a source familiar with the incident said was ransomware — led some grocery shoppers to complain on Facebook in recent days that store shelves were missing Dole-made salad kits. “Dole Food Company is in the midst of a Cyber Attack and have subsequently shut down our systems throughout North America,” Emanuel Lazopoulos, senior vice president at Dole’s Fresh...