The Claim

Approved new heavy-equipment and appliance manufacturing facilities across multiple states.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the Trump administration “approved” new manufacturing facilities for heavy equipment (construction machinery, tractors, etc.) and appliances (washing machines, refrigerators, etc.) across multiple U.S. states. This asserts both a government action (“approved”) and a specific outcome (new facilities in multiple states).

What is being implied but not asserted?

That the administration actively reviewed and authorized these facilities — that without presidential action, they would not exist. The word “approved” implies a regulatory gatekeeping function, as though these projects required federal permission. The plural “facilities” and “multiple states” implies a broad, transformative industrial renaissance.

What is conspicuously absent?

What “approved” actually means. The federal government does not “approve” most manufacturing facilities — these are corporate investment decisions, announced by companies, sometimes incentivized by state tax credits. The claim omits the scale of these investments relative to the sector. It omits the simultaneous layoffs and plant closures by the same companies. It omits the decline in actual manufacturing construction spending throughout 2025. And it omits the broader context: manufacturing employment fell by an estimated 68,000-103,000 jobs during 2025, and the ISM Manufacturing PMI showed contraction for 10 of 12 months.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Several companies did announce new or expanded heavy-equipment and appliance manufacturing facilities in 2025. The White House investment tracker lists five relevant announcements: John Deere ($20 billion over 10 years, including a new excavator factory in Kernersville, NC and parts distribution center near Hebron, IN); GE Appliances ($3 billion over five years, including a new facility in Camden, SC and expansions in KY, AL, GA, and TN); Whirlpool ($300 million for Ohio laundry manufacturing expansion, creating 400-600 jobs); Bad Boy Mowers ($10.5 million tractor plant in Monroeville, AL, creating 50 jobs); and Midwest Equipment Manufacturing ($15 million expansion in Maysville, KY, adding 66 jobs). These announcements span at least seven states. ¹

The Trump administration did not “approve” these facilities in any regulatory sense — these were voluntary corporate announcements. No White House document uses the word “approved” in connection with these investments. The administration’s own language uses “announced,” “committed,” and “secured.” Manufacturing facilities generally do not require federal approval — they require state and local permits, which are not presidential actions. The only meaningful federal action was the tariff regime that companies cited as a motivating factor for reshoring production. ²

GE Appliances is owned by Haier Smart Home, a Chinese company, making its $3 billion “American manufacturing” investment a case of a Chinese-owned firm moving production to the U.S. to avoid tariffs on its own parent company’s imports. Haier acquired GE Appliances from General Electric in 2016 for $5.6 billion. The $3 billion investment explicitly shifts production of gas ranges from Mexico and six refrigerator models from China to U.S. plants. While this creates American jobs, it is fundamentally a Chinese company reorganizing its global supply chain in response to tariff pressure — not American industrial renaissance in the traditional sense. ³

The same companies announcing new facilities were simultaneously laying off thousands of workers and expanding production in Mexico. Whirlpool, while investing $300 million in Ohio, laid off 341 workers at its Amana, Iowa plant in March 2026 (following 250 layoffs in July 2025), with the Iowa workforce dropping from 3,000 in 2020 to approximately 1,300. Union officials confirmed Whirlpool invested over $1 billion to expand Mexico operations, tripling its Mexico workforce. John Deere laid off 2,167 workers in 2024 and hundreds more in early 2025, and announced in June 2024 it was moving skid steer and track loader manufacturing from Dubuque, Iowa to Ramos, Mexico. Deere has cut more than 4,500 U.S. jobs since 2015. ⁴

Manufacturing construction spending — the most direct measure of new facilities actually being built — declined throughout 2025. Census Bureau data (FRED series TLMFGCONS) shows manufacturing construction spending peaked at $240,119 million (SAAR) in August 2024 and fell to $202,420 million by December 2025 — a 15.7% decline. This decline reflects the winding down of Biden-era CHIPS Act-driven semiconductor fab construction, which had driven a 211% surge from 2021-2024. Multi-year announcements made in 2025 had not yet translated into measurable construction activity. ⁵

The overall U.S. manufacturing sector contracted for most of 2025 by standard measures. The ISM Manufacturing PMI was below 50 (indicating contraction) for 10 of 12 months in 2025, reaching a low of 47.9 in December. Manufacturing employment fell by an estimated 68,000-103,000 jobs during 2025, with most losses in durable goods manufacturing — the very sector (appliances, equipment) this claim targets. Price pressures from tariffs on steel and aluminum drove the ISM prices subindex to 70.5 in December, its highest since June 2022. ⁶

Strong Inferences

The facility announcements were primarily driven by tariff avoidance, not by a proactive “approval” process. Whirlpool’s CEO explicitly stated the $300 million investment was made “because of tariff policies — yes, absolutely.” GE Appliances’ announcement directly cited tariff policies. John Deere positioned its $20 billion pledge to “alleviate” tariff impacts. Companies were not seeking government approval to build — they were reorganizing supply chains to avoid costs the government imposed. This is a meaningful distinction: the administration created a problem (tariff costs on imported goods) and companies responded by moving production domestically. Whether this represents “approval” or “coercion” is a matter of framing. ⁷

The smaller facilities on the list (Bad Boy Mowers, Midwest Equipment Manufacturing) are padding that inflates the “multiple states” framing. Bad Boy Mowers’ $10.5 million investment creating 50 jobs is orders of magnitude smaller than typical industrial policy outcomes. Midwest Equipment’s $15 million “expansion” is actually a consolidation — moving existing production of Tru-Cut mowers and Brown Bear composters from Thorntown, Indiana to Maysville, Kentucky, which may create no net new jobs nationally. Including these alongside multi-billion-dollar announcements from Deere and GE Appliances creates a misleading impression of breadth. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The factual core of this claim is thin but real: several companies in the heavy equipment and appliance sectors did announce new or expanded U.S. manufacturing facilities during 2025, and these facilities span multiple states. The largest announcements — John Deere ($20 billion over a decade), GE Appliances ($3 billion over five years), and Whirlpool ($300 million) — are genuine corporate plans that, if fully realized, would create several thousand manufacturing jobs.

But the claim’s framing distorts the picture in several ways. First, “approved” mischaracterizes the administration’s role. The federal government does not approve manufacturing facilities; companies make investment decisions in response to market conditions, which in this case prominently included tariff pressure. The administration’s contribution was creating tariff costs that made domestic production relatively more attractive — a legitimate policy lever, but not “approval.”

Second, the announcement-versus-outcome gap is enormous. These are multi-year pledges spanning 5-10 year horizons, made during a year when actual manufacturing construction spending fell 15.7% and manufacturing employment declined by tens of thousands of jobs. The companies making the loudest announcements were simultaneously laying off workers and expanding in Mexico. Whirlpool’s $300 million Ohio investment and 341 Iowa layoffs happened within the same corporate strategy. Deere’s $20 billion pledge came after 2,167 layoffs in 2024 and continued Mexico expansion.

Third, the composition is misleading. The largest “American manufacturing” investment on the list — GE Appliances’ $3 billion — comes from a company owned by China’s Haier since 2016. This is a Chinese company moving production to avoid tariffs on its own parent company’s imports. It creates American jobs, which matters, but it is not the “American industrial renaissance” the framing implies.

Finally, this claim is part of item 93’s $10 trillion investment framework — the same announcements counted again in a narrower sectoral frame. The heavy equipment and appliance facilities listed here are a subset of the broader investment tracker, which item 93 already analyzed as substantially consisting of non-binding, multi-year announcements with poor historical completion rates.

The Bottom Line

Companies did announce new and expanded heavy equipment and appliance manufacturing facilities across multiple states in 2025 — this much is true. The tariff regime genuinely incentivized some reshoring decisions, and executives explicitly credited tariff policy for accelerating investments. Steel-manning the claim: if even a fraction of these pledges materialize, they will create real manufacturing jobs in real American communities.

But “approved” is a fabrication of the administration’s role — the government did not approve these facilities, companies announced them. The claim cherry-picks announcements while ignoring the simultaneous layoffs, Mexico expansions, and factory closures by the same companies. It presents multi-year pledges as accomplished facts during a year when manufacturing employment declined, manufacturing construction spending fell 15.7%, and the ISM Manufacturing PMI showed the sector in contraction for 10 of 12 months. The framing converts corporate responses to tariff coercion into a narrative of presidential industrial leadership, while the companies making these announcements were shedding American jobs with the other hand.

Footnotes

1. White House, “TRUMP EFFECT: A Running List of New U.S. Investment in President Trump’s Second Term,” March 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/trump-effect-a-running-list-of-new-u-s-investment-in-president-trumps-second-term/; Bad Boy Mowers announcement: Alabama Governor’s Office, December 10, 2025, https://governor.alabama.gov/newsroom/2025/12/governor-ivey-welcomes-10-5-million-bad-boy-mowers-tractor-plant-50-jobs-headed-to-monroeville/; Midwest Equipment Manufacturing: Plant Services, December 18, 2025, https://www.plantservices.com/industry-news/news/55340228/midwest-equipment-manufacturing-inc-to-spend-15-million-expanding-kentucky-factory. ↩

2. White House press releases on manufacturing (“Made in the USA,” March 2025; “Manufacturing Boom,” October 2025) consistently use “announced” and “committed” — never “approved.” Federal permitting streamlining EOs (July 2025) applied to data centers and pharmaceuticals, not general manufacturing. ↩

3. GE Appliances press release, August 13, 2025, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250813577880/en/; CBS News, “GE Appliances moving more output from China and some from Mexico to U.S.,” August 2025; CNN, “Why GE Appliances will make more washing machines in Kentucky instead of China,” June 26, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/26/economy/ge-appliances-reshoring-washers-tariffs. ↩

4. CBS News, “U.S. manufacturers are still shedding thousands of jobs,” March 2026, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/manufacturing-jobs-whirlpool-layoffs-iowa-trump-tariffs/; Investigate Midwest, “John Deere has cut more than 4,500 jobs since 2015,” January 14, 2025; Food Tank, “John Deere Cuts Thousands of U.S. Jobs While Expanding Operations in Mexico,” June 2025. ↩

5. FRED series TLMFGCONS, Census Bureau via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 2026-03-18, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLMFGCONS; FactCheck.org, “Manufacturing Construction Spending Declines Under Trump,” February 10, 2026, https://www.factcheck.org/2026/02/manufacturing-construction-spending-declines-under-trump/. ↩

6. ISM Manufacturing PMI Report, December 2025, https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/reports/ism-pmi-reports/pmi/december/; American Economic Liberties Project, “U.S. Trade Deficit Up, Manufacturing Jobs Down by 49,000,” October 2025, https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/u-s-trade-deficit-up-manufacturing-jobs-down-by-49000-other-manufacturing-growth-measures-mixed-in-first-nine-months-of-2025/; BLS CES data, https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001. ↩

7. Fox Business, “Whirlpool CEO says Trump tariffs create ‘level playing field,’” October 2025, https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/whirlpool-ceo-says-trump-tariffs-create-level-playing-field-us-manufacturing-expansion; Supply Chain Dive, “Deere to open two facilities in $20B US manufacturing drive,” 2025, https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/deere-open-two-facilities-20b-commitment-us-manufacturing/811055/. ↩

8. Alabama Governor’s Office, December 10, 2025; Plant Services, December 18, 2025. Midwest Equipment consolidation moves Tru-Cut mowers and Brown Bear composters from Thorntown, IN to Maysville, KY — a geographic shift, not net new manufacturing. ↩