Wisconsin trailer manufacturers need a level playing field 

Wisconsin State Journal
by Bob Wahlin

 The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs has plunged Wisconsin businesses into a state of uncertainty. Critically important domestic manufacturing industries are now on life support. As President Trump prepares to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping, he must remember the American workers who depend on industries like mine while China and other countries cheat the system and flood the U.S. with unfairly traded products. 

Manufacturing is the backbone of our great country. Stoughton Trailers has proudly been a family-owned, Wisconsin-based manufacturer of American-made trailer products since 1961. After starting in my early teens as a janitor before working my way into leadership roles, I am proud to serve as CEO 40 years later. Most days, I walk our factory floor to chat with many of our 2,500 manufacturing workers, who are truly like family. Many of them are deeply concerned about unfairly traded foreign trailers from China, Canada and Mexico flooding the U.S. market. 

Protecting fair trade is critical, not just for manufacturers, but for thousands of American trailer workers and the essential supply chains our trailer products support. Some 50,000 hardworking Americans are directly and indirectly employed by our great industry, which serves as the backbone of communities across Wisconsin and nationwide. 

Further, at this very moment, a product you need is making its way across the country towards you because a trailer is available to carry it. More than 70% of freight in the United States moves by truck and trailer, making this industry all the more crucial to protect from unfair foreign trade practices. 

This is why the American Trailer Manufacturers Coalition — of which Stoughton Trailers is a founding member — filed an antidumping and countervailing duty petition against foreign trailer producers from China, Mexico and Canada. Stoughton was part of a prior successful effort to obtain 

trade relief on imports of intermodal container chassis from China, and we are in the midst of an additional intermodal chassis trade case for Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam, so we know what a difference these cases can make. This is not a blue or red issue. It is a long-overdue effort to restore fairness to a distorted market and save American manufacturing jobs. 

In recent weeks, the Department of Commerce has initiated an investigation, and the U.S. International Trade Commission took a vital first step in the right direction: in February, the commission made an affirmative preliminary injury determination in recognition of the harm caused by these unfairly traded imports. 

When Stoughton began producing van-type trailers in 1968, roughly 20 U.S. manufacturers competed in a healthy, market-driven industry built on productivity and integrity. This tide changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s as massive, state-supported foreign producers distorted the U.S. market, using unfair tactics and government subsidies to buy American market share rather than earn it. According to our antidumping and countervailing duty petition, after sizing up the U.S. industry, Hyundai flooded the U.S. market from Mexico with sharply underpriced trailers. Meanwhile, China’s state-owned firm, China International Marine Containers, used its Chinese and Canadian operations to relentlessly undercut American manufacturers in a flood of imports. 

The consequences were quick and predictable: prices were driven to levels no legitimate American manufacturer could sustain, regardless of productivity or investment, gutting an industry of 20 producers to just seven, even as demand in the U.S. market itself grew. Today, imports have sunk prices so low that American manufacturers are often forced to take on unprofitable work, just to keep customers and their plants running. U.S. producers are left with few choices, and many have been forced to eliminate hundreds of jobs despite their best efforts to compete. 

Our coalition turned to the antidumping and countervailing duty process after all other options were exhausted. While we support free trade, it must be fair trade. As Wisconsinites, we believe in hard 

work, fair competition, and winning business on merit. American companies can compete with anyone in the world when the rules are followed. 

If successful, these duties won’t eliminate competition. Instead, they will ensure that trailers sold in the U.S. are priced fairly and compete based on real value. Without relief, growth is off the table, and the domestic industry could be wiped out. 

The future of U.S. trailer manufacturing depends on a level playing field. For over 60 years, Stoughton Trailers and its peers have built a domestic industry supporting American workers and our local economy. We need strong support from our political leaders in Washington, D.C., to help save 50,000 American jobs and give America’s trailer manufacturing industry a fighting chance.