President Trump is ramping up his long-planned tariff war, promising to restore “Boomtown USA.” Before the start of the president’s first term, one small town made a bid to revive its manufacturing glory days. After a foreign company came to town, it made some headway. WSJ’s Chao Deng explores the story of Newberry, South Carolina. Further Listening: - Wall Street Speaks Out Against Tariffs - Trump 2.0: Trade Wars and Deportation Battles - Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Newberry, South Carolina's economic revival?
Rick Farmer works in Newberry, South Carolina, as the county's economic development officer. So tell us about Newberry.
Sure. First of all, it's a great little community. The city's motto is the city of friendly folks. It is, in a lot of ways, it's similar to other small South Carolina towns, or small cities, actually. Population's about 10,000.
Are there grumpy folks in Newberry?
Oh, sure. They're everywhere.
Back in 2016, Rick got some bad news.
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Chapter 2: How did the closure of the Caterpillar plant affect Newberry?
I remember it like it was yesterday. April of 2016, I got a phone call. Hey, Rick, did you hear the news? And the news was our local caterpillar plant was closing.
Caterpillar, the iconic American manufacturer of construction equipment. It was leaving its factory in Newberry, and that meant losing over 300 jobs. When you first heard that news that they were moving out, how would you describe it?
Well, I knew there would be a lot of concern because, again, it was our number one brand. It was the most recognized brand that was here in Newberry County. They were some of the best jobs in the community. And I remember standing on the floor of Community Hall explaining to the Rotary Club why this is not the end of the world.
But at the same time, I just wondered how much of that I really believed and how much of that I was just trying to keep folks from panicking.
But Newberry was about to get an assist from a presidential hopeful who was promising to revitalize American manufacturing.
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Chapter 3: What role did Donald Trump play in Newberry's economic changes?
I am going to bring back our jobs to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Michigan and all of America. And I am not going to let companies move to other countries.
Donald Trump, his main tool to bring those jobs back was tariffs. And for Newberry, that would bring in a new employer and chart a new path to growth. This is the playbook that Trump is now trying to replicate today on a much larger scale. But Newberry's good fortune came at a cost. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Tuesday, April 8th.
Coming up on this show, one town that benefited from Trump's tariffs and what it meant for everyone else. Our colleague Chow Deng covers the economy and has been following Trump's tariff plans. What is his policy goal with these tariffs?
Okay, so there are a whole bunch. His administration says that tariffs can raise revenue for the U.S. They can protect American businesses. They can move manufacturing back to the U.S. They can create jobs for American workers. Do you have a sense of what he's envisioning? I mean, he has talked about the U.S. manufacturing glory days.
these American towns that revolved around like, you know, a single factory. So you remember like when one town revolved around steel making or another town revolved around furniture making or textile making. At that point, you know, to have a good manufacturing job that was well paying was really a way to, you know, become a middle class American family.
Newberry was one of those towns. It had a long, cherished manufacturing history tied to the textile industry.
If you walk around, especially down its main street, you can see its legacy of being a booming textile town back in the day. If you drive around enough, you can actually see some of these dilapidated buildings that used to be cotton mills. And then when the textile industry in the U.S. fell back, residents of this town began to flow out.
There was some farming left, but there really wasn't much going for it.
Rick Farmer's job as Newberry's economic development officer is to keep jobs in town and bring in more. which is why it was such a gut punch when Caterpillar said in 2016 it was moving out and leaving Newberry with an empty factory.
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Chapter 4: How did Newberry attract Samsung as a new employer?
But then, Rick caught wind of another project that could turn around his town's fortunes.
I got a call from the broker saying, I got a private plane landing in Columbia, and it's got 25 Asian engineers in it, and I need you to meet them at the facility and give them the local spiel. And of course, I did that. I got there, and sure enough, this was a large contingent. I knew that this had to be a significant project, but honestly, at that early stage,
I don't spend much time worrying about who it is. I care about what they're trying to do and how we're going to make that happen.
That large contingent of engineers was with Samsung, the giant Korean manufacturer. Rick gave them a tour of the factories.
And they're talking about ceiling heights and water flows and, you know, water pressure and all of this other stuff. And I'm not an engineer, so I just sit back and look pretty when these things are going on and let the engineers hash it out.
What was at stake for you?
Well, in a relatively small community, you don't get a lot of opportunities like this. One of the things that worries industrial development prospects is when they're dealing with a small community, where are we going to get the workforce? And that's a big concern because they don't want to have to import labor from outside of the community.
And they worry that we're just too small to make it happen. But of course, my job was to convince them otherwise.
Samsung was in Newberry looking for a new place to build washing machines. It was scouting several locations around the country. After months of looking, Samsung picked Newberry and announced a $380 million investment. And when you found out you won, what did that feel like?
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Chapter 5: What challenges do small towns face in attracting big companies?
So how has this deal been for your community?
It's been great. It's been a very large economic impact on the community. But even more importantly, I think what it did is it created sort of a bridge. You know, in an ideal situation, a worker will start off with no experience. He's at the bottom of the ladder. He works his way up a little bit. He gains skills and experience.
And then at some point he can take a different job because he's now got the training. He's now got the experience. So it created another pathway for people to kind of leap to the middle of the pack instead of having to just grind your way up.
Trump's washing machine tariffs expired in early 2023. The Samsung factory now employs more than 1,500 workers, and it brings in more than a million dollars of annual tax revenue to the city.
You know, when I was in the town, I talked to some of the restaurants that were near the factory and they remember when the factory opened and they noticed they had more customers and it just seemed to be a very hopeful moment for the town. And then, you know, months pass, you saw more Korean firms come in.
So you had at least two Korean firms that were supplying washing machine parts to Samsung come in. And they then created hundreds more jobs. So there was a bit of a ripple effect on the local level.
But on the national level, things were more complicated. That's next. — Samsung's interest in a U.S. factory was influenced by Trump's election. He had vowed on the campaign trail to bring more manufacturing jobs back into the country. And he was talking a lot about trade.
— He didn't have the specificity as he has today, but he was basically threatening tariffs. And if you were Samsung or any other major multinational, you would know that tariffs would have been coming. And then early on, when he, you know, became president, he started talking about industries like steel, aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines. Washing machines.
In Trump's first term, he took specific aim at imports of these everyday household appliances.
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