Nashville, Tennessee (AP) – Drew Greenblatt is completely on board with the The use of prices by the Trump administration To rebalance a global trade system, he says favors foreign companies on American manufacturers.
Greenblatt is president and owner of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore, Maryland, who makes baskets and racks for manufacturers of medical devices, aerospace companies, food processing companies and others. It has 115 employees and manufactures its products in three places in Maryland, Indiana and Michigan. Steel comes from Tennessee, Illinois and Michigan.
Currently, it is difficult to compete with the baskets made abroad., Says Greenblatt, because the countries to which they compete have “unfair advantage”. For example, due to European prices and taxes, it costs much more for a German consumer or business to buy Marlin wire baskets than for Americans to buy a German manufacturing basket, creating an unequal playing field, said Greenblatt.
“It’s very unfair to the American worker,” he said. “And this has happened for decades.”
A crane raises a container at the port of Baltimore on Wednesday April 9, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP photo / Stephanie Scarbrough)
What Trump does
The Trump administration has called the United States to manufacture a priority for “economic and national security”. American manufacturing has been decreasing for decades. In June 1979, the number of manufacturing workers culminated at 19.6 million. In January 2025, employment fell from 35% to 12.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Small manufacturers, who represent 99% of all American manufacturing, have been particularly affected.
Administration has implemented certain prices against the main American trade partners, while Put a grip on other prices negotiations pending. The Trump administration claims that prices will force companies to have more products in the United States made to avoid high prices increases in their imports, which means “better remunerated American jobs”, for people manufacturing cars, household appliances and other products.
Greenblatt agrees, saying that he could double his staff if “parity” in the prices becomes a reality.
Uncertainty for companies
While other small manufacturing companies also support prices, other owners have concerns. The asset Prices threaten to upset the existing economic order And possibly push the global economy into the recession. And the unequal deployment of the policy has created uncertainty for companies, financial markets and American households.
For Corry Blanc, the injection of uncertainty around the economy exceeds any potential advantage.
He launched his business, White Creatives in Waynesboro, Virginia, in 2012. He made hand -made kitchen utensils such as stoves and other kitchen utensils and cooking utensils with American Steel and Wood and employs 12 staff members. He draws his steel from a Southern Carolina factory and a distributor in Richmond. Wood comes from local regional sawmills near the company’s headquarters in Waynesboro, Virginia.
He said he called on the worried calls for customers in Canada and abroad. And he says that the infrastructure is not in place to increase production if more people are starting to buy American manufacturing products.
Blanc said he had survived the pandemic and at other difficult times, but that the conditions are now the most difficult they have ever been.
“There is so much uncertainty and not much direction,” he said.
Michael Lyons is the founder of Rogue Industries, a company that manufactures portfolios and other leather items in a Standish workshop, in Maine, with nine -year staff. He uses Maine and Midwest leather. About 80% of its products are made in Maine and 20% are imported.
He said that uncertainty around prices prevails over any potential long -term advantage. A longtime customer from Canada recently told Lyon that he would no longer buy from Rogue Industries because of the friction between the two countries.
“I hope it will pass and that he can come back,” he said. “But I thought it was a kind of interesting indicator for him to reach out.”
Lyon would like to extend his business, but says: “At the time, it will probably be, we will hold on what we have.”
Hoping for more American manufacturing products
The American general CEO Bayard Winthrop has a more positive opinion. He founded his clothing company in 2011 after looking at the textile industry getting offshore and saw a lack of quality American quality clothes. It started by selling a sweatshirt and now sells a wider range of clothing, mainly direct to consumers, but it also has a contract with Walmart.
He gets cotton in cotton from the southeast states such as Georgia, Florida and North Carolina and has a factory in North Carolina and a joint partnership establishment in Los Angeles.
“People forget that around 1985, that all the clothes that the Americans bought were made in America,” he said. “It was not until the past 40 years that we have really pursued as a country a very aggressive approach to globalization.”
In 1991, more than half of the American clothes, around 56%, were manufactured in the United States, according to statistics from American Apparel and Footwear Association. By 2023, this number had reduced to less than 4%.
Winthrop hopes that prices will return to more American manufacturing products.
“The imbalances between our exchanges, in particular with China, in particular the textiles, is just shocking, to be honest with you,” he said, adding that he hopes that Trump’s policies “have put national manufacturers on a little more competitive foot”.
Winthrop understands people’s concerns, but said it was important to think in the longer term.
“Americans worry about prices, and I think there is a lot of justification for concern because I think the administration can be volatile and unpredictable,” he said. But he added that people should put this aside.
“The idea that we are going to be more protective of our internal market and having an industrial policy that includes manufacturing jobs is an old idea. It is not a new idea,” he said.
