Jobs, jobs, jobs!

GM announced Monday that it would close up to five North American auto factories — four in the U.S. — including the Lordstown plant currently assembling the Chevrolet Cruze. GM will discontinue the Cruze in March and has not assigned a new product to the plant, likely closing it.

Trump told reporters Monday that he spoke to Barra on Sunday night and “was very tough.” He said he urged Barra to keep the Lordstown plant running and promised to put “a lot of pressure” on GM.

“I think you’re going to see something else happen there, but I’m not happy about it,” Trump said, departing the White House for campaign stops in Mississippi. “I have no doubt that in a not too distant future they’ll put something else. They better put something else in.”

Trump also told The Wall Street Journal in a Monday interview that he asked Barra on Sunday to stop making cars in China and that the company “better damn well open a new plant there very quickly.”

“I love Ohio,” Trump said, according to the Journal. “I told them, ‘you’re playing around with the wrong person.’ ”

  The Hill

Tough guy.

At least 84 farms filed for bankruptcy from June 2017 to June 2018 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Montana, and North and South Dakota, according to analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The report released earlier this month shows that over the same time period in 2014, 32 farms filed for bankruptcy.

The numbers have increased steadily since then, with 46 bankruptcies reported in 2015, 60 bankruptcies reported in 2016 and 67 reported in 2017.

[...]

President Trump pledged $12 billion in aid for farmers impacted by global tariffs. A recent report in The New York Times found the aid had done little to help farmers, however.

[...]

Some experts fear the worst is yet to come amid falling commodity prices and the Trump administration's battles with China and other countries on trade.

“Current price levels and the trajectory of the current trends suggest that this trend has not yet seen a peak,” wrote Ron Wirtz, an analyst at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

More than 60 percent of the reported bankruptcy filings for the region were in Wisconsin, which could suggest a large number of dairy farm bankruptcies. Wisconsin is the country's second largest producer of milk.

[...]

China has also largely closed its market to U.S. soybeans amid the fight over trade.

  The Hill