Trump admin ripped by WSJ editors over auto factory he 'supposedly saved'

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board laid into Trump's history of failed industrial policy decisions on Friday — using as an example his intervention on behalf of an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that his first administration "supposedly saved."

The Lordstown plant has been a long string of failed and broken promises for the president ever since the whole sequence of events got set in motion in 2019, when General Motors moved to close the facility, endangering the northeast Ohio area that has more broadly seen a massive decline in the manufacturing sector over the last several decades.

"President Trump lambasted GM CEO Mary Barra in 2019 for shutting down the Chevy plant. 'I asked her to sell it or do something quickly,' he tweeted. 'I just want it open!'" wrote the board. Shortly after, "GM provided electric-vehicle start-up Lordstown Motors a $40 million loan to buy and retrofit the site. Mr. Trump used the company’s prototype EV pickup as a prop in his 2020 re-election campaign. The President called it an 'incredible vehicle' and talked up sales during an event at the White House with the startup’s CEO." Trump boasted that "we made a deal" to save the area that had been "devastated" by the plant closure.

"Nobody in the White House seemed to care that Lordstown had no experience manufacturing cars," wrote the board. "Within a few years, the startup collapsed. Its trucks burst into flames during testing. Lordstown sold the factory to Foxconn in 2022 to raise capital, but filed for bankruptcy a year later. Foxconn was in talks to build EVs at the plant for Fisker and IndiEV. Both failed. Enormous subsidies for EVs couldn’t overcome weak demand."

Now, a new deal could potentially resurrect the plant — but not for building cars. Foxconn has sold it to the Japanese firm SoftBank, who will convert it into a manufacturing facility for AI data center equipment.

This is not even the only vaporware promise Trump made to his supporters involving Foxconn. He similarly announced a grand deal for the Taiwanese company to build a heavily subsidized LCD screen manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, which similarly imploded.

"What’s the lesson of Lordstown?" the board concluded. "Politicians may show up at ribbon-cuttings and make big promises. But they hope nobody’s paying attention by the time their political efforts to steer markets end in failure."