Trump’s Tariffs Have Killed Off the Ford Focus

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Donald Trump is making America great again:

Ford Motor Co. has ditched plans to import its Focus compact vehicle from China to the U.S. starting next year, citing an expected hit from import tariffs the Trump administration put into effect in July. Ford had planned to begin shipping a new version of the Focus from China, starting in the second half of 2019. But the 25% tariff now in place upended the economic case for importing the vehicle, said Kumar Galhotra, head of Ford North America.

….Ford recently discontinued U.S. production of the Focus, but said it would re-enter the market next year as a small crossover utility vehicle made in China. The decision to nix the import plan means the Focus nameplate will no longer be sold in the U.S., a spokesman said.

So now there will be no Focus at all. It probably doesn’t matter much, but it demonstrates the peril of ill-advised tariffs. Sure, this hurts China a bit, but it does nothing to change the fact that manufacturing the Focus in America doesn’t make sense for Ford. There will be no new jobs for American workers and no new assembly lines. So what was the point?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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