The Last Major TV Factory in the U.S. Is Shutting Down Because of President Trump's Tariffs
A South Carolina plant that assembles televisions using Chinese parts plans to shut down and lay off nearly all its employees because of new tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration, the company announced this week.
Element Electronics — which describes itself as the only assembler of televisions in the U.S. — plans to lay off 126 of its 134 permanent full-time employees and close the Winnsboro, S.C. plant on Oct. 5. Notably, there are still at least two smaller companies that continue to assemble speciality televisions in the U.S.
“The layoff and closure is a result of the new tariffs that were recently and unexpectedly imposed on many goods imported from China,
including the key television components used in our assembly operations in Winnsboro,” Carl Kennedy, Element’s vice president of human resources, said in a letter to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce on Monday.
Kennedy said he
hopes the closure will be temporary and the company is advocating for its parts to be removed from the tariff list. “We remain hopeful that the closure of our South Carolina factory will be avoided,” Element said in a statement shared on social media Tuesday.
President Donald Trump often lamented on the campaign trail that the United States “doesn’t make television sets anymore.” At the time, it was already true that there were no U.S. factories making televisions from scratch — just a few that assembled televisions using imported parts. But with the closure of Element’s plant,
the United States will no longer assemble mass-market television sets anymore, either.
Trump has defended his escalating trade war with China as necessary to reduce the U.S. trade deficit and bring back American jobs. But U.S. companies have complained about rising business costs, and trade experts have warned that the tariffs could hurt the U.S. economy. An analysis by the right-leaning Tax Foundation last month predicted Trump’s trade policy could lead to the loss of nearly 365,000 jobs in the long run.
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