GM Learns How to Navigate Trump’s Washington
The company has little room for error, when neither the Twitter-loving president nor the Democratic Party wants to see their voters lose jobs.
A view of the East Plant entrance at General Motors’ Lordstown Complex assembly plant in Ohio on Nov. 26, 2018.
Photographer: Alan Freed/Reuters
Corporate management in the age of Donald Trump is a learning experience. Perhaps no company has absorbed more painful lessons than General Motors.
GM’s political education by fire started just over a year ago, when the profitable automaker announced plans to shut down several factories, including in Michigan and Lordstown, Ohio, part of a once-Democratic county that went for Trump in 2016. The backlash was swift and fierce, from both parties. The president savaged GM and Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra for days, declaring in one tweet that “The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get!” Democrat Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s senior senator, called the plans “corporate greed at its worst.”