More Trump job losses as GM blames 3,300 layoffs on regulatory changes

GM is laying off a total of 3,300 workers at three separate manufacturing sites in Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, and it directly cites government actions as the reason.

The republican party has claimed that one of its primary goals in the current political environment is to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. However, as is the case with many of its claimed goals, the policy it implements acts directly against those goals.

In this case, republicans have been in the process of an all-out assault on American manufacturing – working to reduce investment in America, slow development of new manufacturing projects, make enemies out of countries and companies that had been our former allies, and directly stop efforts to boost America’s manufacturing base and prepare the country for the future.

And today, the effects of the republican party’s recent $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites are being felt by one of America’s largest historical manufacturing employers: General Motors.

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GM cites “evolving regulatory environment” as it lays off thousands

GM announced that it would lay off 1,200 workers in in “Factory Zero” plant in Detroit and 550 in Ohio at its Ultium battery plant, along with 850 additional temporary layoffs in Ohio and another 700 temporary layoffs at its Ultium plant in Tennessee. That’s a total of 3,300 jobs lost in today’s announcement.

Both Ultium plants will be temporarily idled at the start of 2026, resuming sometime in the middle of the year, with upgrades occurring during the pause.

GM made a statement directly tying the layoffs to “an evolving regulatory environment” which has caused “slower near-term EV adoption.”

Companies have falsely claimed for around two years now that EV demand is down, despite that it has increased for that entire time. However, there was a spike in EV demand last month as the US EV tax credit ended, causing a pull-forward of demand that is likely to result in a period of lower EV sales in the US in the coming months, even as EV sales will continue to rise globally.

While GM is one of the better-selling EV brands in the US, and has quite an extensive stable of options, it has also recently unwisely pulled back on its EV ambitions, offering an opening for its domestic and foreign rivals to fill the gap created by its intransigence. And these are not the only policy-related layoffs GM has announced – it already laid off thousands of workers last month.

GM recently said it will lose $1.6 billion this quarter alone as a result of these changes in policy, including rollbacks in clean air regulation from the EPA and DoT, which GM lobbied for through its membership in the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. That’s a lot of money to lose (especially after literally asking for it), so job losses were basically inevitable.

Biden brought auto jobs to the US; republicans send them to China instead

The EV tax credit was implemented in 2022 by President Biden and Congressional Democrats, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, a collection of manufacturing and climate-related reforms intended to boost America’s domestic manufacturing competitiveness. Part of the bill included domestic sourcing provisions for EVs and battery materials, which led to hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The bill also led to trade deals that would help to wrest control of raw materials from China, the country that currently has most of the world’s supply and refining capacity, such as a US-Japan free-trade deal for battery minerals.

But as soon as this unquestionably good thing happened for America, republicans had to stop it. Their huge giveaway to the rich also included provisions to reverse most of the positive reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act, with the goal of stopping the boom in American manufacturing that happened under President Biden (because, of course, it threatens their oil masters).

In total, the republicans’ efforts to harm US manufacturing and make your air dirtier will likely result in 2 million job losses for America. GM’s 3,300 today are just one small story among many others – a wider retreat in American auto and clean energy manufacturing that is a direct result of the republican party’s actions.

Already, $24 billion in clean energy investments have been lost. These investments would have driven manufacturing growth and created not just those manufacturing jobs, but associated supply and service jobs to fund American communities.

Many of these lost investments are simply a result of making the US less attractive, but some are due to direct government intervention in a specific project. Take, for example, the high-profile ICE raid at a Hyundai plant in construction in Georgia, which saw South Korean businessmen with visas detained and resulted in delayed construction on the plant and a swift popular pushback against US products in Korea.

And the imposition of unwise tariffs is reversing the potential positive impacts of President Biden’s battery trade deals, making the US an island and pushing other countries into the arms of China. Mr. Trump’s tariffs led to immediate job losses in the US and Canada and resulted in Canada, our closest ally with which we share the longest border on Earth, considering a deeper relationship with China (nevermind that the US president can’t impose tariffs on his own… or that Trump himself is barred from holding any office in the US).

And finally, the country that is most likely to benefit from this retreat in US manufacturing is China. China is currently experiencing a boom in EV manufacturing, and recently became the largest auto exporting country in the world due to Western refusal to take high-tech manufacturing seriously. The more the US retreats from manufacturing the vehicles that the whole world wants, the more China will be happy to pick up the slack. And if we stick to this unwise direction, today’s job losses will only be a fraction of the misery brought upon America by republican actions.

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