At Whirlpool’s Amana refrigerator factory - the facility known locally as the "Big Blue" because of its robin's-egg-colored siding - the workforce and production have both contracted sharply over the past year even as President Donald Trump has touted tariffs intended to revive U.S. manufacturing. The plant, which once employed nearly 2,000 people, has seen more than half of those jobs disappear in the last 12 months. Where five assembly lines once turned out refrigerators approaching one million units annually, only a single line remains active today, and another 288 workers are scheduled to be laid off in July.
Tariffs enacted and promoted by the administration were presented as a mechanism to make imports more expensive and thereby encourage domestic production. Whirlpool has been widely viewed as one of the firms that could benefit from such a shift because the company manufactures about 80% of the appliances it sells in the U.S. at its 10 - soon to be 11 - domestic plants, leaving it relatively less exposed to import duties than some competitors. Still, the Amana plant’s contraction illustrates that the relationship between trade policy and factory employment can be complex and uneven.
Whirlpool’s chief executive, Marc Bitzer, described the company last year as a "net winner" from the trade policies. Yet that positioning has not prevented job losses in Amana nor stopped Whirlpool’s stock from sliding to its lowest levels since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Company executives acknowledge the tariffs have cut both ways - narrowing cost advantages enjoyed by lower-cost importers, while also increasing the company’s own costs for steel and some imported components.
As management rebalances its footprint, Whirlpool has increased sourcing from plants in Mexico and China and shifted some specialty-model production to an upgraded plant in Ohio. The company has also announced substantial investments in other U.S. operations as part of a broader modernization push. In October the company said it would invest $300 million in its Marion and Clyde, Ohio plants, which produce washers and dryers, and in April it revealed plans for a $60 million plastic-parts factory in Ohio to support its laundry business.
Whirlpool has framed the overhaul at Amana as a long-term commitment to making refrigerators in the U.S. Jason Ebert, the company’s vice president of North American manufacturing, said Whirlpool still believes it can be competitive producing refrigerators domestically. He described the workforce reductions and assembly-line shutdowns as necessary to clear space for new technology and updated assembly layouts. Design work for the new lines, he said, is underway.
Luke Harms, Whirlpool’s director of government relations, argued that trade measures have helped reduce the cost gap when competing against predominantly low-cost foreign manufacturers, including those based in China. He noted that the administration extended steel tariffs to derivative products such as appliances and applied tariffs to the full value of the product - moves he said increased the company’s confidence in its modernization plans. At the same time, Harms acknowledged that tariffs on steel and imported components have raised Whirlpool’s input costs.
Union leaders and plant employees in Amana paint a different and more pessimistic picture on the ground. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents the remaining employees at the site, estimates that the plant once produced more than 900,000 refrigerators a year. Today it makes fewer than 250,000 units, according to the union.
Kerry Waddell, who worked at the plant for 36 years and now serves as a business agent for the union, said he has watched the workforce steadily diminish as Whirlpool invested heavily in its Mexico refrigeration operations. Attendance at the union’s recent monthly meeting, held at a local community center to discuss the layoffs, was sparse - another sign of the plant’s reduced scale. Union members have even been addressing logistical tasks such as clearing furniture from an old union hall that the smaller workforce can no longer support.
Longtime employees voiced frustration and resignation. Greg Cousins, a 63-year-old forklift driver who said he plans to retire next year, told colleagues he believes production is being moved to Mexico and sees little evidence of the modernization efforts Whirlpool describes. "It's all going to Mexico," he said.
Others have expressed a sharper political reaction. Aaron Southard, a 44-year-old auto press operator and a Republican who voted for Trump, said the losses have pushed him toward supporting Democrats in the upcoming midterms. "We thought we’d be getting our jobs back," he said. "I feel betrayed - they’re out there stomping and saying Make America Great and bring jobs back."
For some displaced workers, other employers are already attracting candidates. Sub-Zero, the maker of high-end refrigerators, is building a new non-union plant in nearby Cedar Rapids and has begun to draw employees from Whirlpool. The migration highlights how some segments of U.S. appliance manufacturing remain active but increasingly cluster around different products, price points and labor arrangements.
The economics of producing refrigerators in the U.S. are difficult. Refrigerators are labor-intensive assemblies with many components and increasingly complex features such as through-door ice and water dispensers and multiple doors. That complexity means refrigerators are harder to automate compared with other appliances such as washing machines or stoves, which can be produced more quickly on automated lines. These structural production challenges make decisions about plant locations, investments and sourcing particularly sensitive to input costs and demand.
The broader industry has also faced a wave of activity tied to the tariff policy itself. With announcement of tariffs, appliance makers moved to import goods ahead of the effective dates, creating a surge of imports that undercut pricing power in an already weak housing market - a key demand driver for large appliances. The tariff-driven import surge contributed to a competitive environment that squeezed margins across the sector.
Investors have signaled displeasure with Whirlpool’s performance. The company’s shares have fallen roughly 70% since President Trump returned to the White House 17 months ago and the administration issued a series of rapid tariff orders. Whirlpool also suspended its dividend, ending a run of consecutive payouts that had stretched for seven decades. For some employees, the dividend suspension has personal consequences - Southard noted that his own Whirlpool holdings used to generate about $600 a year in dividend income, a sum he says is now gone.
The workforce reductions in Amana carry political implications as well. The plant sits in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where the midterm election is considered competitive. The district’s Republican incumbent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, won her seat by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2024. The race is listed among the country’s most closely contested, and the Whirlpool layoffs have prompted correspondence from both the incumbent and her GOP colleague Ashley Hinson to Whirlpool’s CEO expressing concern. Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan also wrote to company leadership and criticized the nature of the trade approach designed to bring jobs home.
Republican representatives who contacted Whirlpool warned that the layoffs "would hollow out a community and undermine the very domestic manufacturing base that American workers have spent decades building," while Bohannan said she saw the tariffs as "reckless" and not the path to restoring local jobs. Miller-Meeks emphasized that she engaged with Whirlpool leadership upon learning of the layoffs and followed up with a formal letter.
The White House has defended the tariff strategy as part of a broader plan to reindustrialize the country and prod investment into American manufacturing. A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said the administration was implementing a "nimble and multi-faceted strategy for America’s long-term reindustrialization" and that industry leaders, including Whirlpool, had committed to "investing trillions into American manufacturing." That investment message has been borne out in announcements of plant spending in Ohio, even as Amana contracts.
Whirlpool says it is investing in U.S. manufacturing, albeit not uniformly across all existing facilities. At the same time, the company has been increasing sourcing from plants outside the U.S., and has shifted some product lines to newer or updated facilities elsewhere. Those choices underscore the uneven and sometimes contradictory effects trade policy can have: measures intended to protect domestic production can simultaneously raise input costs, prompt supply-chain shifts and lead companies to redeploy capital in ways that do not necessarily preserve every historic local operation.
For the workers remaining in Amana, uncertainty is pervasive. The plant that once turned out nearly a million refrigerators a year is now operating at a fraction of that pace. Union representatives and several employees said they have watched work move to Mexico over recent years while local operations have been pared back. Management says the reduction and retooling are a prelude to a modernized operation, but many on the shop floor remain unconvinced.
Key points
- Whirlpool’s Amana, Iowa plant has cut more than half of its nearly 2,000 workforce in the past year and now runs one assembly line instead of five, with another 288 jobs slated for elimination in July.
- Tariffs championed by the Trump administration have had mixed effects - narrowing foreign cost advantages while increasing Whirlpool’s costs for steel and imported components, prompting supply-chain shifts and mixed investment outcomes across U.S. plants.
- The layoffs carry political ramifications in a competitive Iowa congressional district and have occurred alongside significant company investments in other U.S. facilities, particularly in Ohio.
Risks and uncertainties
- Policy uncertainty and tariff-related cost changes may continue to affect input costs and capital allocation decisions, with uneven effects on employment across plants and regions - impacting manufacturing and industrial supply chains.
- Weak housing market demand, combined with tariff-driven import timing that depressed pricing power, could sustain pressure on appliance manufacturers’ margins and investment plans - affecting consumer durables and related suppliers.
- Local political consequences from job losses could influence electoral dynamics in closely contested districts, creating additional uncertainty for policymakers and firms operating in those communities.
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