GM has cited many reasons for their reasons to shutdown certain facilities and car designs, and lay-off thousands of US and Canadian workers.
And you can bet that a lot of the decision making is not coming from just the roundtable in GM's Management Boardrooms, but are coming from the boardrooms from their Stock Management Meetings and the decisions made by their preferred stock holders. This is how Wall Street controls Main Street. Preferred Stock holders make decisions that forces lay-offs and shut-downs to protect their investments. For instance, GM announced the lay-offs and shut-downs, and GM stock rose 4.8% by the end of the day. Investors welcomed the news, sending G.M.’s shares up 4.8 percent to their highest closing price in about three months.
Dynamics change from one president to another. During the Obama administration, GM and other US carmakers re-tooled themselves to produce more economic models of autos as they came out of their Red Ink, and also due to Obama's long-term goals of making autos with higher MPG averages mandated by 2025. Auto-makers were certainly receptive to the MPG mandates when they were getting a bailout by the government from loans to get them out of red ink. But since Donald Trump scrapped Obama's MPG goal strategy, and since Oil prices have been steady, consumers started buying mostly full-size pickups and SUV's again while trading in their economy and alternate fuel models for them.
But here we go again with American consumers and Auto manufacturers getting drunk on gasoline again, and setting themselves up to drown in red ink again by not thinking past Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump may just be a very temporary thing, and end up just being a bump in the road- a flash-in-the-pan! LOL!
In addition, automakers have paid a price for the trade battle that Mr. Trump set in motion. In June G.M. slashed its profit outlook for the year because tariffs were driving up production costs, raising prices even on domestic steel. Rising interest rates are also generating headwinds.
Earlier this year Ford said it would stop making sedans for the North American market and announced cuts in its work force. Fiat Chrysler stopped making small and midsize cars in 2016.