Whirlpool cuts Iowa factory jobs as Trump tariffs fail to lift output

Whirlpool is cutting 288 more jobs at its Big Blue refrigerator plant in Amana, Iowa, bringing total layoffs there to 879 since summer 2025. The latest reduction will take effect when second-shift production ends on July 5, and the company has cast it as part of a multi-year modernization plan to keep the plant competitive and viable for the long term.

The layoffs land hardest at a factory once built around scale. The Big Blue site, named for its robin-egg-colored siding, used to run five assembly lines and produce nearly a million units a year. Now only one line is operating, a sharp contraction that undercuts the idea that tariffs alone can restore industrial employment.

That gap is especially visible at Whirlpool, which makes about 80% of what it sells in the United States from ten domestic factories, soon to be eleven. In theory, the company should have been better positioned than import-dependent rivals to benefit from Donald Trump’s tariff push. Instead, tariffs raised Whirlpool’s costs for steel and imported components while weak housing demand sapped appliance sales, squeezing margins rather than driving a hiring surge. Trump’s April 2025 promise that “jobs and factories will come roaring back” looks far removed from the payroll cuts in rural Iowa.

Whirlpool’s own numbers point to the strain. In its May 6 first-quarter results, the company said it was taking “decisive actions” to restore profitability in North America, including double-digit price increases and faster cost-cutting. It blamed a rapid deterioration in macroeconomic conditions and a collapse in consumer confidence in late February and March, which it said fed a recession-level decline in U.S. appliance demand.

The financial damage has been visible on Wall Street as well. Whirlpool shares fell to more than a 14-year low in early May after the company cut its full-year profit forecast by half and suspended its dividend. Chief executive Marc Bitzer had described the company as a “net winner” from Trump’s tariff agenda, but the Amana plant tells a different story: fewer lines, fewer workers and no manufacturing rebound to match the rhetoric.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers criticized the cuts and said Whirlpool continues to expand in Mexico even as it trims Iowa jobs. Whirlpool’s roots stretch back to November 11, 1911, and the Amana brand was founded in 1934 by George Foerstner in Middle Amana, a long Midwestern manufacturing lineage now colliding with automation, demand weakness and corporate restructuring.