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    Trump accused of caving to big business after deal to cut Swiss tariffs to 15%

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    Donald Trump agreed to cut US tariffs on Switzerland from 39% to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.Critics seized on the announcement as evidence that the White House had put corporate interests ahead of those of struggling Americans, as inflation continues to increase the cost of living nationwide.“While prices for American families are going way up because of Trump’s chaotic tariffs, it’s the billionaires and giant corporations cozying up to Trump that get relief,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.Leading Swiss executives met Trump at the White House earlier this month. Rolex, the luxury Swiss watchmaker, also invited the president and a string of his officials to the US Open tennis final in September.Upon arrival, Trump “did ask in jest whether he would have been invited had it not been for the tariffs”, Jean-Frédéric Dufour, the Rolex CEO, later disclosed. This was “a moment that brought a round of laughter all around”, he added.Dufour denied that Rolex had engaged in “any negotiation” with the US over tariffs. The White House dismissed Warren’s criticism as “asinine conspiracy theories”.Trump was gifted a golden table clock by Rolex, which was later spotted on his desk in the Oval Office. Another firm is said to have donated an engraved gold bar.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, also confirmed the breakthrough on Friday, telling CNBC, the financial news network, that both sides had “essentially reached a deal”.The Trump administration agreed to limit US tariffs on Switzerland and Liechtenstein “to a maximum of 15%” under the deal, according to a statement from the Swiss government.This brings US tariffs on Switzerland in line with those on the European Union – allowing Swiss exporters the same treatment as rivals in neighboring countries.In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”Swiss officials also committed to granting a series of quotas for US goods that can be exported to Switzerland on a duty-free basis, including 500 tonnes of beef, 1,000 tonnes of bison meat and 1,500 tonnes of poultry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The date for implementing these market access concessions will be coordinated with the US to ensure that customs duties are reduced at the same time,” the statement said.This is the latest “framework” trade deal to be struck by Trump and his administration. Unlike formal free trade agreements, which are substantial and can take years to negotiate, these pacts have typically been narrow in focus and light on detail.The precise timing of the implementation, and when the new tariffs and quotas will be enforced, has yet to be finalized.“They’re going to send a lot of manufacturing here to the United States – pharmaceuticals, gold smelting, railway equipment,” Greer claimed on CNBC, “so we’re really excited about that deal and what it means for American manufacturing.”The Swiss government said companies in the country were “planning to make direct investments” in the US worth $200bn “by the end of 2028”. More

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      Trump administration moves again to dismantle top US consumer watchdog

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      The Trump administration has launched its most direct attempt yet to shut down the top US consumer watchdog, arguing the current funding mechanism behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unlawful.Attorneys for the administration claimed in a court filing that the agency “anticipates exhausting its currently available funds in early 2026”, setting the stage for it to be dismantled.The CFPB is legally barred from seeking additional funds from the Federal Reserve, its typical source of funding, the attorneys suggested.Donald Trump’s officials have tried persistently to close the agency, attempting to fire the vast majority of its workforce. These efforts sparked months of legal wrangling.The CFPB has returned more than $21bn to US consumers since it was set up, in the wake of the financial crisis, to shore up oversight of consumer financial firms.The justice department’s office of legal counsel issued an opinion claiming the CFPB cannot draw money from the Fed currently, claiming the “combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System” refers to profits of the Fed, which has operated at a loss since 2022.Several federal judges have previously rejected that argument used by companies attempting to dismiss lawsuits brought by the agency, reported Politico.Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget director, said in October that he plans to shut down the agency, and that this would take up to three months.The claim was criticized by Democrats, given previous contrary statements from the administration, and court decisions blocking the agency from being shut down.“These comments are particularly concerning given that a federal court has specifically blocked you from illegally shutting down the agency,” wrote Senate banking committee Democrats in a letter to Vought. “Your continued attempts to shutter the CFPB are illegal, and American families stand to pay the price.”Vought has already suspended most of the agency’s work, as the full DC circuit court of appeals is deciding whether to take the case as a lower court order blocked the firings of about 90% of the agency’s staff.The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      in UK Politics

      Half of employers could raise prices if cost of hiring goes up in Budget

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      Britons might need to be poised for fewer jobs or higher prices once more next year, after a new survey of business owners suggested almost half of them (49 per cent) would be considering hiking them if employment costs are raised again in the Budget.Most firms have been hit at least once this year and several of them from multiple angles, following changes to the minimum wage, National Insurance contributions, rules around packaging costs, the end of business rates relief for some industries and the prospect of lower overseas sales due to tariffs.Those cost pressures, along with widespread uncertainty over what is coming in this month’s Budget, has left some firms holding off on hiring additional workers, even as interest rates have slowly lowered across the year.Now research by Employment Hero and a survey of 1,000 business leaders by One Poll shows that pricing and employment plans are both in the firing line if Rachel Reeves delivers further disappointment.Along with the 49 per cent considering raising, a third (33 per cent) also said they would delay further hiring if the cost of employing people rises again. Almost one in four (24 per cent) also said they would consider making redundancies from existing roles.More than half (59 per cent) of business owners suggested they don’t feel Budget decisions consider the needs of small businesses, while a whopping 86 per cent said they were “concerned” over what the Budget would mean for the company over the longer term.The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) have repeatedly warned the government against any further raises of business taxes, saying firms couldn’t continue to shoulder more and more of the burden to fix the economy.While Ms Reeves has cited the need for economic growth, experts have argued that her policies are taxes are stifling it.Rising prices contributes to increased inflation, which has been a major issue in the UK over the past few years. While the rate was lower than expected at 3.8 per cent in September, it remains well above the 2 per cent target and an inflationary Budget could add to the damage.While the numbers over potential price rises will be of concern, other data may point to a limiting effect in what actually transpires.Business insurance provider Simply Business released a report on Monday showing fewer small firms who had planned to raise prices in spring actually did so – fewer than half, compared to 74 per cent who had planned to do so.However, that in turns means that absorbing extra costs means profitability shrinks, placing further pressure on those who would normally provide jobs.“The Chancellor has an opportunity to address these challenges by reducing the cost of doing business and providing a platform for growth. Small business owners are calling for the government to reduce Corporation Tax for small profits (15 per cent), reverse or reduce employer NI increases (14 per cent), and provide more support for energy bills (14 per cent),” said Julie Fisher, UK CEO of Simply Business.Kevin Fitzgerald, UK managing director at Employment Hero, added: “When you tax small businesses, you tax everyone. It creates a domino effect – higher costs lead to higher prices, fewer jobs and less money in people’s pockets. Small businesses employ the majority of our workforce. Make life harder for them, and you make it harder for Britain to grow.“The Autumn Budget is an opportunity to learn from past mistakes.” More

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      in US Politics

      Growth in global demand for ‘green’ office buildings slows amid Trump policies

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      The growth in global demand for “green” office buildings has slowed after Donald Trump’s assault on environmental protection policies caused a slump in interest in the US, according to a survey of construction industry professionals.Building occupiers and investors across North America and South America expressed significantly lower growth in demand for green commercial buildings, a shift that “seems to be in response to a change in US policy focus”, according to a survey of members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Reported demand across the rest of the world also fell, albeit not as sharply.Residential and commercial buildings together accounted for 34% of global carbon emissions in 2023, according to the UN Environment Programme. The majority of those emissions came from heating, cooling and powering buildings, although about a fifth came from construction.The UN said there was a “critical need for accelerated action in the buildings sector to meet global climate goals”. However, the Rics survey suggested global construction industry professionals were experiencing slower growth in demand.Green buildings can use a range of techniques to cut their environmental impact, ranging from using materials that reduce high-carbon concrete, to cutting water use, cutting heat lost through windows, and using renewable energy. Energy efficiency improvements in particular also help to cut operating costs.Nicholas Maclean, Rics’s acting president, said: “It seems to me that what we’re seeing at the moment might be a blip.“The people who are going to end up using these buildings want them to be sustainable. Everybody, frankly, knows this is the right thing to do.”He added that green office buildings tend to have a “competitive advantage” in attracting higher rents, because of demand from large-scale corporate tenants, in particular.There were still more US respondents to the survey who reported growth in interest in sustainable commercial buildings. However, the balance of building professionals across the continent reporting higher demand fell sharply, from 25% to 11%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOutside North and South America, the balance reporting growth in demand was 40%, still down from 48% in 2021, the first year of the survey, but far above the US.Kisa Zehra, Rics’s sustainability analyst, said government policy and regulations have a “huge impact on the confidence of the market”. The Trump administration has made a concerted effort to dismantle a huge range of environmental protections put in place by Republican and Democratic predecessors, undermining confidence in green standards.Rics also highlighted a decline in the number of construction industry professionals who measured their projects’ embodied carbon, such as that emitted in making materials such as steel, glass and concrete, or in the construction process itself. Forty-six percent of construction professionals reported not measuring embodied carbon, up from 34% the year before. Only 16% of respondents said carbon measurement meaningfully informed material choices in project design. More

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      in US Politics

      Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

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      It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).“There’s just a massive cognitive dissonance between what real people are going through, and the elite,” said Larry Hannan, communications and policy director of State Voices Florida, a coalition of more than a hundred non-partisan, pro-democracy and civic engagement groups.“Jeff Bezos does not need a $50 food card. But we saw that with the Great Gatsby theme party last week. They just can’t seem to stop doing things that are shockingly out of touch.“We’ve been through shutdowns before, and while obviously the White House bubble is always somewhat insane, presidents are usually smart enough, they usually know not to flaunt this type of stuff. But this administration does not seem to care.”The president’s hour-long address on Thursday had the flavor of a political rally, with familiar insults for old political foes such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and a new one: Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York.View image in fullscreenTrump touched on his economic agenda, and lauded a host of speakers from the worlds of politics, sport and business that filled the two-day agenda, created largely by Francis Suarez, mayor of the city of Miami, to showcase south Florida and its investment opportunities.Lionel Messi, the Argentina soccer star and World Cup winner, provided celebrity glitz from sporting circles, along with tennis champions Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. A conversation between Suarez and María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist who last month won the Nobel peace prize that Trump coveted, was well received on day one.Yet overall it was a curious and unmistakably politically charged event with a field of Trump sycophants on the stage, loudly cheered by a crowd of mostly younger and affluent supporters of the president in the audience, some blending business suits with his trademark red Make America Great Again (Maga) caps.How else to explain the presence of Javier Milei, the rightwing president of Argentina, the country whose shaky economy Trump helped shore up last month with a $20bn currency swap lifeline? Or that of Saudi Arabians Fahad AlSaif, head of its $925bn Public Investment Fund, and Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Riyadh’s ambassador to the US, touting their country as ripe for investment while the Trump family’s financial ties and influence there come under greater scrutiny?Then there was Gianni Infantino, head of Fifa, international soccer’s governing body, dropping hints that Trump is in line for the organization’s first peace prize, an unwanted new award that observers see created specially for the president as consolation for his Nobel snub.Other speakers, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan; Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork and Flow; and Griffin, the hedge-fund manager and Republican donor; have all previously praised, worked with or voted for Trump, offering more than a suggestion of a politically skewed lineup.Suarez, unsurprisingly, saw it differently.“We wanted it to be a sort of a cross-section from different verticals, right?” he told the Guardian.“We got in a room. We said, ‘Hey, what are the leading voices?’ People from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders … sports, business, politics, technology, things that touch everyone’s lives.”He pointed to discussions of upcoming, money-spinning notable events in Miami, including the Formula One grand prix, next year’s G20 economic summit at Trump’s Doral golf resort, and games during the 2026 World Cup, which he called “a generational opportunity”.“Our hope is that Miamians are transformed by the experience,” Suarez said. “We want them to leave thinking, ‘I can be on that stage.’”View image in fullscreenThe advocates of State Voices Florida, however, believe many Miamians are more focused right now on other issues, especially soaring housing and food costs. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis rejected a call from Hannan’s group and others to declare an emergency over Snap benefits and tap state reserves to fund urgent food distribution.“Any civics teacher would tell you it’s his job to look after the people of Florida, and he’s doing the exact opposite,” Hannan said, noting the juxtaposition of a conference of billionaires taking place in the same county in which almost 25% of households rely on Snap benefits to survive.“There just seems to be this detachment at the top. I don’t think the answer is electing a Democrat or electing a Republican, I just think we have to have more empathy for people who are struggling in this state.”Empathy was in short supply in Miami from Trump, a president not known for ever taking responsibility during a crisis.“The radical left Democrats are causing millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to go without benefits,” he said, blaming the out-of-office opposition party for the government shutdown.“I just want to have a country that’s great again. Is that OK?” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s supreme court strategy is to redefine ‘tariffs’. Will the justices buy it?

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      Donald Trump faced arguably the biggest test so far of his contentious use of executive power at the US supreme court on Wednesday. The stakes could not be higher – “literally, LIFE OR DEATH” for the US, at least according to the president.Trump’s signature, globe-rattling economic policy, his sweeping tariffs regime, was in the dock – specifically, the legal mechanism his administration has used to enforce it. And the man dispatched to defend the White House put forward a somewhat puzzling argument.“These are regulatory tariffs,” D John Sauer, US solicitor general, assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”It was a curious, and more than a little confusing, explanation – tariffs on goods from overseas might raise revenue, but are not revenue-raising – designed to counter rulings by lower courts that set the stage for this test before the highest court in the land.A federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled in August that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of his tariffs, did not grant “the power to tax” to the president.Congress is granted sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. Trump bypassed Congress – lawfully, his aides insist – to drive through a policy estimated to equate to the largest tax hike since 1993.Thus, on Wednesday morning, the administration appeared to argue before the supreme court that these tariffs – taxes paid by myriad US companies on imported products – were not really taxes at all.Critics are not having it. “Anybody can look up in the dictionary,” Maria Cantwell, Democratic senator from Washington, told the Guardian. “Tariffs are an import tax, plain and simple. I would assume the administration understands that.”“I actually am surprised that it was so lacking,” Cantwell added, of the administration’s case.The court did not appear persuaded, either. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “But that’s exactly what they are.”Some conservatives on the bench also sounded skeptical. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice John Roberts.The administration’s argument that the fact tariffs raise money is “only incidental” might be more persuasive if the president spent less time boasting about the amount of money they raised. “My tariffs are bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump declared in a speech hours after the hearing.The president has argued – in typically binary terms – that the fate of his flagship economic strategy is aligned with that of the nation. But there are many business owners in the US, grappling with the abrupt imposition of steep tariffs, who believe the fate of their companies has been jeopardized by this regime.While official statistics (at least, those published before the government shutdown) have shown persisting inflation and a stalling jobs market, Trump continues to erroneously claim his agenda is producing stellar results. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” he wrote on social media during Wednesday’s hearing.It is ultimately down to voters, as some did on Tuesday, to deliver their verdict on Trump’s agenda. For now, a handful of small firms, together with a dozen states, have joined forces to challenge the way in which he has rammed it through.“We think that this case is really about executive overreach,” said Stephen Woldenberg, senior vice-president of sales at Learning Resources, a toy company based near Chicago that sued the administration to invalidate Trump’s tariffs as exceeding his authority.At the heart of this case is really a “broader issue”, according to Woldenberg, of who sets taxes – and how – across the US. “We weren’t really willing to let politicians, and really a single politician, decide our fate,” he said.That fate is now in the hands of a court Trump has shaped. The justices have pledged to fast-track their decision. On Wednesday, at least, most sounded unpersuaded by the administration’s defense. More

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      in UK Politics

      Budget: Pound plummets after Reeves hints at tax rises – but government bonds rally

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      The pound has dropped to a six-month low after Rachel Reeves gave her strongest hint yet that taxes will rise at the Budget in a major speech on Tuesday morning.The pound, which was already lower ahead of the speech, fell further after the comments to stand 0.3 per cent lower at 1.31 US dollars and 0.3 per cent weaker at 1.14 euros, not far off last week’s over two-year low against the single currency.Sterling has been under pressure in recent days amid worries over the UK economy and ahead of the Bank of England’s interest rate decision on Thursday, with another cut seen as being increasingly likely.Experts appear split on whether that cut will come in November or December, but the chances of a further reduction from 4 per cent currently have increased as inflation is thought to have peaked now at 3.8 per cent while the jobs market outlook looks more shaky.Meanwhile Britain’s long-term borrowing costs edged lower after the chancellor reiterated an “ironclad” commitment to her fiscal rules.Rachel Reeves refused to be drawn when asked if the government would break the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT More

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      Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $698bn in past year – report

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      The collective wealth of the top 10 US billionaires has soared by $698bn in the past year, according to a new report from Oxfam America published on Monday on the growing wealth divide.The report warns that Trump administration policies risk driving US inequality to new heights, but points out that both Republican and Democratic administrations have exacerbated the US’s growing wealth gap.Using Federal Reserve data from 1989 to 2022, researchers also calculated that the top 1% of households gained 101 times more wealth than the median household during that time span and 987 times the wealth of a household at the bottom 20th percentile of income. This translated to a gain of $8.35m per household for the top 1% of households, compared with $83,000 for the average household during that 33-year period.Meanwhile, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.“Inequality is a policy choice,” said Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America. “These comparisons show us that we can make very different choices when it comes to poverty and inequality in our society.”The report outlines the way that systems in the US, including the tax code, social safety nets, and worker’s rights and protections, have been slowly dismantled, allowing concentrated wealth to turn into concentrated power.Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”, passed by Congress in May, has been one of the “single largest transfers of wealth upwards in decades”, according to the report, by cutting tax for the wealthy and corporations.But over the last few decades, Republicans have not acted alone.“Policymakers have been choosing inequality, and those choices have had bipartisan support,” Riddell said. “Policy reforms over the last 40 years, from cuts to taxes and the social safety net, to labor issues and beyond, really had the backing of both parties.”Policy recommendations outlined in the report fall into four categories: rebalancing power through campaign finance reform and antitrust policy; using the tax system to reduce inequality through taxes on the wealthy and corporations; strengthening the social safety net; and protecting unions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese solutions can be tricky to carry out politically because of long-term stigmatization, particularly of social safety nets and taxation. The report refers to the concept of the “welfare queen” popularized during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, while taxation has always been seen as repressive for all rather than as a tool for addressing inequality.“What’s really needed is a different kind of politics,” Riddell said. “One that’s focused on delivering for ordinary people by really rapidly reducing inequality. There are sensible, proven reforms that could go a long way to reversing the really troubling trends we see.”The report features interviews with community leaders who are actively working to reduce inequality, even as progress has seemingly stalled on the national stage. In one interview in the report, union representatives for United Workers Maryland said the current moment seems ripe with opportunity because many Americans are starting to see how the current set-up isn’t working for them, but only for the people at the very top.“I think it’s brilliant that they see this as an opportunity,” Riddell said. “I love thinking about this moment as an opportunity to look around us and realize our broader power.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

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      For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.Two miles south of Jeffersonville, Korean and Japanese companies LG Energy Solution and Honda are in the midst of sinking $3.5bn into a facility that is expected to begin production in the coming months.Hundreds of people have been employed in the construction of the plant, and more than 525 people have been hired to work in engineering and other manufacturing roles at the facility. In total, about 2,200 people are expected to be employed on a site that, until several years ago, was open farmland.But some locals are concerned.A host of Trump administration policies – tariff measures and the end of clean vehicle tax credits worth thousands of dollars to car buyers – are causing multinational manufacturing companies to consider pausing hundreds of millions of dollars in future investments, a move that would hit small, majority-Republican towns such as Jeffersonville especially hard.Moreover, a raid by ICE immigration officers on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, a small town in south-east Georgia in September that saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and sent home has sent shock waves through places like Jeffersonville and the C-suites of international companies alike.View image in fullscreen“The construction process has been slowing down. My fear is that the whole thing is going to stop, and we’re left with just unfinished concrete out there,” says Amy Wright, a Fayette county resident, of the under-construction battery plant.“What’s more, a lot of the people hired to do the construction of the plant are not locals. They are from out-of-state; I’ve met them at the gym.”While in last year’s presidential election, 77% of voters in Fayette county backed Trump, recent polls suggest his popularity in rural America has taken a nosedive.One poll suggests that his approval rating among rural Americans has slipped from 59% in August to 47% in October. Others chart his net approval rating in states he won in last year’s presidential election – Ohio, Michigan and Indiana – in negative territory by as much as 18.9 points.Wright says her son, who works for a local company that supplies Honda with parts, recently received notice that a prior promise of overtime work was being rescinded. She says she believes Honda is reeling in spending due to US government policies.“Tariffs are affecting everything,” says Wright.What’s happening in Jeffersonville is being mirrored across the midwest.In Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, global giants Toyota and Stellantis have spent billions of dollars in small communities, much of which came in the form of clean energy tax breaks from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Toyota’s biggest production facility on the planet is in a small Kentucky town called Georgetown, where the company employs more than 10,000 people and has invested $11bn in the local economy since the late 1980s. These workers churn out nearly half a million vehicles and hundreds of thousands of engines every year.However, in August Toyota warned that it faced a $9.5bn financial hit to it and its suppliers due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, the largest estimate of any automotive manufacturer. In July, Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said Trump’s tariffs were undermining investments in the state such as Toyota’s, calling them “chaos”.View image in fullscreenSixty-three per cent of voters in Georgetown’s Scott county backed Trump in last year’s presidential election.Last April, Stellantis laid off 900 workers at locations across the midwest due to Trump’s tariffs.In Indiana, one of the largest employers in the state, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche is reportedly considering pulling out of $50bn worth of investment in the coming years if Trump follows through on his executive order to target companies that don’t reduce drug prices.“No [manufacturer] wanted to alienate customers, but those days are past. So, the bulk of tariff price increases will hit in the coming months. This matters, because factory employment is a major share of rural counties in the midwest – about 30% in Indiana, and similar in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Michael Hicks, an economist and professor at Ball State University in Indiana.“These things will clearly have a political effect, but my hunch is not fully for several months. Overlaying all this is the risk of a significant [economic] downturn, where tariffs combine with a financial bubble that would surely hit rural – red – communities very hard.”Still, others believe that the tariffs will benefit small American towns in the long run.“Toyota is doing fine and I don’t see [tariffs] as being a big hurt for us here in Georgetown,” says Robert Linder, co-owner of the Porch restaurant that’s situated a mile north of the huge facility, and who worked at the plant for 29 years.In April, Toyota suggested it might move more vehicle production to Georgetown to beat the tariffs, though that move could be years in the making. Sales of Toyota brands in the US have been growing this year, with the company thus far eating the cost of tariffs rather than passing it on to consumers.“They just announced a $10bn investment in the United States for more Toyota plants. If Toyota was worried about [tariffs] they wouldn’t be expanding,” says Linder. Recent reports, however, suggest the $10bn figure referred to previously announced investments.However, large multinationals have a track record of announcing major projects only for reality to play out in a very different way.In Wisconsin, the Taiwanese tech company Foxconn claimed it would spend $10bn on a facility outside the town of Mount Pleasant. Instead, local taxpayers today find themselves on the hook for $1.2bn spent on highways, attorneys and other infrastructure for a facility that has never transpired.In Arizona, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), backed directly by Trump, has been plagued with lawsuits related to safety and other issues, and missed project deadlines following promises to become a major employer of local talent.Despite Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, recently claiming there was no need to worry about the future of the LG-Honda battery plant, on 28 October, Honda announced it was reducing production at plants across Ohio due to a semiconductor chip shortage.While more than two dozen jobs are available at the Jeffersonville site, according to the LG-Honda plant’s hiring website, it’s a far cry from the more than 2,000 positions cited by officials previously.For Amy Wright, policies coming out of the White House are having a clear effect on residents of rural Ohio. As an organizer of four local No Kings protests against Trump’s policies she’s noticed a change in the people who are coming to the rallies.“We’ve had more and more people who have voted for [Trump] show up and say: ‘This is not good, this is not what we voted for,’” she says. More