US small manufacturers hope to benefit from tariffs

NASHVILLE: Drew Greenblatt is fully on board with the Trump administration’s use of tariffs to rebalance a global trading system that it says favors overseas companies to manufacturers.

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Greenblatt is the president and owner of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore, Maryland, which makes baskets and racks for medical device manufacturers, aerospace companies, food processing companies and others. It has 51 employees and markets its products in three locations: Maryland, Indiana and Michigan. The steel is sourced from Tennessee, Illinois and Michigan.

Currently, it’s hard to compete with baskets made overseas, Greenblatt says, because the countries he competes against have an unfair advantage. “For example, due to European tariffs and taxes, it costs much more for a German consumer or company to buy a Marlin wire basket than does an American consumer or company,” he said. “It’s wildly unfair to the American worker,” Greenblatt said. “And this has, by the way, been going on for decades.” The Trump administration has called US manufacturing an “economic and national security” priority. US manufacturing has been declining for decades. In the 1970s, the number of manufacturing workers peaked at 19.6 million. By January of 2025, employment was down 35.8 to 19.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Small manufacturers, which make up 99% of all American manufacturing, have been hit particularly hard.