Workers at Whirlpool, the US’s largest appliance manufacturer and a champion of Donald Trump’s tariff policies, are criticizing the company for cutting jobs at an Iowa plant while bolstering production in Mexico.
The job cuts at Whirlpool come as the company has continued to support the Trump administration’s trade policies and claimed they will help bolster US manufacturing. Trump’s trade policies appear to have done little for US manufacturing so far. The US has lost 83,000 factory jobs since Trump took office in January 2025.
Effective 9 March, 341 jobs are being cut at the Whirlpool plant in Amana, Iowa. The cuts come less than a year after 250 jobs were cut in July 2025. According to International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union (IAM) officials, the company has informed them that more cuts are on the way later this year. The plant produces refrigerators under the Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag and Amana brands.
Whirlpool opened a new manufacturing facility in Mexico in August 2025, and union officials and workers say their manufacturing work and jobs have been moved there.
Sandra Freytag, the first shift plant chair who has worked at the plant for 31 years, told the Guardian that Whirlpool began cutting production lines from the plant and moving those to Mexico several years ago.
“Now we’re seeing that they’re making our product in Mexico,” said Freytag.
She said the number of workers at the plant had declined from nearly 3,000 just a few years ago to close to 1,300, and that she believed more cuts were likely. Whirlpool has about 20,000 employees in the US, with 14,000 in manufacturing at 10 factories.
“We’re not seeing a ton of parts or new opportunities or changes in their platforms that might support all of us staying in the factory or even staying open long term,” she added. “Whirlpool is the only big facility around this area. So they’re about seven small towns that it’s going to devastate when those people lose their jobs, and if we lose any more, I don’t know that we’ll have small towns left in that area.”
During Trump’s first term, Whirlpool sought and received tariffs on imported washing machines, their competitors, calling it a win “for American workers and consumers alike.” In 2020 Trump gave a speech at a Whirlpool plant in Ohio, calling the compan
y a “shining example” of the “buy American and hire American” policies his administration was pursuing.
According to the conservative Heritage thinktank, the tariffs drove up prices of the appliances, costing consumers $1.5bn annually and decreasing demand.
Whirlpool touted Trump’s tariffs in 2025 as part of a $300m investment in Ohio and the creation of 400 to 600 jobs. Whirlpool claims 80% of its US sales are produced in the US.
“We would either have scaled down, made it later, or hesitated,” CEO Marc Bitzer told Fox News in October 2025 of the investment, one of several the CEO made on the outlet touting tariffs in 2025. “We’re strongly supportive of tariff policy and very thankful.”
Whirlpool noted in its most recent earnings call in January 2026 that tariffs cost them $300m in 2025.
Sam Cicinelli, the midwest territory general vice-president for IAM, criticized Whirlpool for the layoffs after the company received millions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits in Iowa.
He explained when the union was informed by Whirlpool of the recent job cuts: “the company also warned us that they’re going to be making even more cuts that are on the way at the end of the second quarter. This is not a one-time, one-off business decision on their part. It shows it’s a deliberate pattern of corporate abandonment.”
He claimed Whirlpool had a history of laying off workers in Iowa in search for cheaper labor.
Cicinelli called the layoffs “an absolute slap in the face to every American worker in this country”.
Trump appeared at a Whirlpool factory in Ohio in August 2020 where he promoted the United States Mexico Canada agreement (USMCA), which he signed in 2018.
Cicinelli added on Whirlpool’s job cuts: “It goes against the USMCA agreement. We should be pumping more resources into the United States. The USMCA was sold to us as the new and improved Nafta, supposed to protect these good-paying jobs, and yet this definitely tells a different story.”
Kerry Waddell, who worked at the Whirlpool plant in Iowa for 36 years before currently serving as a business agent for the union, said Whirlpool workers affected by the cuts currently have no severance agreement, lose their health insurance the day they are laid off and face reduced unemployment benefits as Iowa cut unemployment benefit eligibility in 2022 to 16 weeks.
Waddell claimed that employees had been provided with very little information on the cuts and the reasoning behind them.
“We have tremendous capacity to produce and manufacture in that facility. We’ve got a large employee base in the area for them to draw on to do that work that they’ve chosen not to,” said Waddell. “What they’re actually doing is taking jobs out of Iowa, moving them to Mexico, and those very refrigerators are being brought back into the US for sale.”
After the US supreme court struck down most of the Trump administration’s tariffs, Whirlpool claimed the remaining tariffs on steel and Trump’s 10% global tariff announced after the decision, would grant them a competitive edge.
But workers at the Whirlpool plant in Amana, Iowa, noted that the tariffs are not preventing the company from continuing to cut jobs at the plant and move their work to Mexico.
“Being there over 30 years, I’ve grown myself with this company. I’ve devoted my life to them. I’ve raised my children there, and just thinking that I might not have a job in a year, it’s just devastating,” said Sandy Lorenz, third shift plant chair who has worked at the plant for 33 years. “They could keep these products here, and they could keep these people working, but it just comes down to that they are greedy and want to make a little more money. And that’s the bottom line.”
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Whirlpool did not comment on the union’s complaints about offshoring to Mexico.
The company said in a statement: “Our recent announcement is part of a multi-year modernization plan that will transform the plant into a dynamic operation that will continue to produce best-in-class refrigerators, while also incorporating warehousing, parts production and sub-assembly work. This transformation is necessary to position the Amana plant for continued stability and success. We are committed to supporting affected employees through this transition.”
The company emphasized its continued support for Trump’s tariff policies.
“We are confident that the US administration will continue to take strong actions to support domestic manufacturing and American workers,” the company added. “The announcement of a new 15% global tariff under Section 122, the opening of new trade investigations and existence of previously-negotiated trade agreements gives us continued confidence that Whirlpool Corporation will ultimately benefit from trade policies aimed at leveling the playing field for US manufacturers.”
