Workers at a Mack truck plant in Pennsylvania hoped tariffs would help protect their jobs. Now they are facing layoffs — and corporate is citing tariffs as the reason. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Dan Hand has worked at Mack Truck's Lehigh Valley plant for nearly three decades. Photo by Miles Bryan for Vox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What economic impact are tariffs having on the American economy?
The American economy is starting to shake under the weight of President Trump's tariff chaos.
So your answer to the concern about the tariffs is everything's going to be hunky-dory? Everything's going to be just fine.
And it's not just the stock market anymore. The national economy, we learned today, shrank in the first quarter of this year. Down three-tenths of a percent.
We haven't had a negative number since first quarter of 22.
If it shrinks in the second, that's the dictionary definition of a recession, folks. Chinese exports to the U.S. are plunging. Keep your third eye open for shortages. And around the country, tariff layoffs are underway.
Major layoffs for UPS. By next month, 20,000 workers will lose their job, and that's on top of several facilities set to close.
All of this, says the press, to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., except, as we're going to hear, the tariff layoffs are hitting manufacturing now, too. Coming up on Today Explained, we take a trip.
Everything's going to be just fine.
Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are launching our much-anticipated book club, and we're doing it with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, who will introduce their upcoming book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions. Plus, we've got some fun and important updates from The W and the NWSL, and of course, we've got a new Are You a Megan or Are You a Sue?
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Chapter 2: How are tariffs affecting jobs at Mack Trucks in Pennsylvania?
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It's Today Explained. Miles Bryan is a senior producer and reporter on the show. And Miles, you live in Pennsylvania.
I do.
President Trump's tariffs were supposed to bring manufacturing back to the United States. They're supposed to create jobs. But in Pennsylvania, some people are losing jobs as a result of the tariffs. What's happening?
Yeah, the job cuts I'm here to talk about are at Mack Trucks Production Facility in a part of the state called the Lehigh Valley. The valley is a politically swingy part of a famously swingy state. It's also exactly the kind of place that Trump says his tariff policies will help.
You know, after World War II, it was this prosperous manufacturing community anchored by the massive Bethlehem Steel Plant.
At the coke oven division of the steel plant, many varieties of coal arrived from different mines to be blended.
The home plant here in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, operated for nearly a century and at one time employed more than 30,000 people. Today's blast furnace.
But, you know, that plant started struggling in the late 70s and ended up bankrupt by 2001, by which point the whole area had been really hollowed out by deindustrialization. There's even a famous Billy Joel song about it.
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Chapter 3: Who is Dan Hand and what is his perspective on the layoffs?
I've always loved it. All this history made me do a double take when I saw a local news story out of the valley about how Mack Truck was planning to cut around 10% of its unionized shop floor jobs there. And the company was citing tariffs specifically as the reason for the cuts. So last week, I drove up to the area to check it out.
All right. Who did you get to talk to?
Well, I started in Allentown at the Union Hall.
Hello.
I forgot how to turn the alarm off because I haven't been coming here by myself in a long time. with Dan Hand.
My name is Dan Hand, and I'm a District 1 committee man. Dan's originally from the Chicago area. I can still hear it in his accent. He moved out here for his now ex-wife about three decades ago and got hired on at Mack. No college degree. Mack makes the big semi-trucks you see on the highway. It makes dump trucks, garbage trucks, plow trucks.
Mack is a very ingrained company within the Lehigh Valley. So right now, This uni hall sits on Mack Boulevard. Mack World Headquarters used to be across the street from us.
It's a very iconic American brand. Like, it feels very American.
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Chapter 4: Why are Mack Trucks planning layoffs and blaming tariffs?
Yes, it does. You hear about it on TV all the time. There's a lot of different sayings, like, built like a Mack. You also hear that when somebody gets hit by something, it feels like you're getting hit by a Mack truck.
All true. This is a very well-known brand. So is this a good job?
And Dan's telling it was an excellent job when he started. You know, he told me this story of applying with literally thousands of other applicants back in 1998.
And out of that, I think it was 40 people were hired. Jeez, that's more elite than, you know, an Ivy League school. Things were a lot different back then. As far as like with our medical, we didn't have any co-pays or anything like that.
These days, it's not quite as competitive, but the jobs are still really good for this area. And recently, Dan said Mac seemed to be on an upswing. It was preparing for the launch of a new flagship model. And as recently as January was hiring a lot. What happens between then and last week that led to the company announcing layoffs?
Well, all of a sudden we find out that the company decided to have a meeting with us and said that things aren't going very well. They're blaming the tariffs.
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Chapter 5: What is the union's stance on tariffs despite layoffs?
That was fast.
Yeah, Dan said it was a total shock. And, you know, I reached out to Mac's corporate spokesperson. They wouldn't do an interview, but they sent me a statement blaming possible regulatory changes and, quote unquote, market uncertainty and those tariffs. And these layoffs are supposed to come sometime in the next couple of months.
OK, so you were at the union hall. Are Dan and the other men and women in the union, are they mad about the tariffs?
Chapter 6: How does the new Volvo plant in Mexico complicate the situation?
Well, they're uniformly pissed about the layoffs, but they have mixed feelings about the tariffs because they know that the point of the tariffs, at least in theory, is to protect them, to protect this kind of work. And these workers in the Lehigh Valley, they might need that protection.
So last year, we got notification from the company that they decided that they're going to build a plant in Mexico.
Yeah, this is a whole other part of the story I hadn't told you about yet. Last year, Volvo, which owns Mack Truck, announced it was building a big new truck plant in Mexico. The company says it's meant to supplement American workers, not replace them. But Dan and the rest of his union chapter are really freaked out.
You know, they're worried that their jobs are going to end up down in Mexico like so many other autoworker jobs have moved over the years. And last month, the local put out a press release with this sort of dramatic video that condemned Mack's decision.
The policies that reflect trade have not been on the worker's side for many years. And argued tariffs are a good tool to fight it. Those are good jobs that we need to fight for.
All right, so you have a union that is facing layoffs because of the tariffs, making the argument for tariffs. Why do they say tariffs are a good tool?
Well, they make it more expensive to import vehicles from Mexico, and that mitigates the cost savings companies get from moving production to Mexico, where wages are way lower than they are here in the U.S.
But, you know, the union put out that press release in March, before Trump's tariff liberation day, before we saw how this was going to play out, and before Mac announced layoffs because of those tariffs.
What did Dan and the others that you spoke to think of Trump now?
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Chapter 7: What challenges do tariffs pose for sourcing steel and aluminum?
That's a complicated question. Take our union guy, Dan Hand. He's a registered Republican, big Second Amendment guy. He voted for Trump in 2016, but then soured on him because of how he treated organized labor in his first term. And, you know, he was in that video in March. He's not against tariffs in general, but he's not thrilled about how Trump's been rolling them out so far.
I mean, it doesn't seem very well thought out. OK, we're putting this tariff on. Oh, we're going to pull this back. Oh, we're taking a pause. It doesn't seem to be targeted at all. One thing I did find out that's not really... widely published is the fact that for any steel coming into the United States or aluminum, that's at a 25% tariff. And what's that mean for you guys?
Well, our frame rails are made out of steel. We have a lot of different parts of our trucks that are made out of steel and aluminum. So that's going to drive up the cost that the company has to pay for those parts, which is going to in turn probably wind up having to be passed on to the buyer.
Well, I guess the counter argument would be that Mac could buy American steel, right? American aluminum.
Well, you would think that, but a lot of the infrastructure that we have has gone away. If you just look over in Bethlehem, Bethlehem Steel's no longer here.
Dan's identifying a chicken or the egg problem that's like true across manufacturing right now. Lots of American companies that make stuff here rely on foreign inputs. And making that stuff more expensive hasn't immediately created new steel plants or whatever. Bethlehem Steel is still closed. It's actually a casino now.
But it does immediately make it more expensive to build stuff here that relies on foreign material. And on top of all this, President Trump announced Tuesday that he's watering down some tariffs for automakers who import parts. So all this is still up in the air, and we're not sure how it's going to play out.
Does everyone in the union come down on the same side as Dan in this?
No, absolutely not. They're really split on politics and on the tariffs. And I want you to meet one guy who really gets at this, John Tanizer. We met in the parking lot of a grocery store across the street from Mack's plant right after he finished his shift.
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Chapter 8: Why do opinions about tariffs and Trump differ among Mack Truck workers?
It was a bit windy, so we climbed into the back of John's Cadillac to chat.
If you don't mind moving up so he has just a hair move a little bit.
John grew up here in the Lehigh Valley. He voted for Trump, and he likes what Trump's doing with the tariffs.
Currently here, we assemble trucks. We don't manufacture them. We don't make the parts that go into them. We put them together, and most of those parts are made somewhere else in the world. They used to be made here.
It's worth noting that he has seniority. He's not as worried about losing his job. But he says his job has gotten a little bit worse every year. You know, the pay doesn't go as far. The benefits aren't as good. And he's watched manufacturing jobs in this area, his home, dry up over the years. So he told me he's willing to tolerate a fair amount of pain in service of turning things around.
It could be a year. It could be two years. But what we're looking for is a path forward to thrive and not just sustain and exist. In this economy that we're in currently, there's no going forward. The only way forward is to level the field with the rest of the world and allow Americans to compete. I hear constantly that the jobs they're talking about, Americans don't want to do.
Maybe garbage picking or food picking or... We did it all. We built this nation. We built this country. Right now, if we were tasked with trying to build the road system that we currently have, how did we do it? We can't even fix the roads that are already here. We built the entire country. The United States of America was nothing. And it became the global shining castle on the hill.
And then something changed, and we've been on a steady decline ever since that point. We did it before. We certainly can do it again. But it's going to take change.
Do you know what these guys sound like to me?
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