US industry-boosting program scrapped hours before Trump claimed to be savior of business

President Donald Trump's new "Liberation Day" tariffs on foreign goods from all over the world are being sold by the White House as a plan to shift the world economy back to American manufacturing — but just hours before the tariffs were announced, Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk defunded a program that's been boosting American manufacturers for decades, Wired reported.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is a federal program, established in the 1980s while the U.S. was trying to stop the domination of Japanese manufacturing, to offer advice to U.S. manufacturers. "Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas, and dog food," according to the report.

However, on Tuesday the Trump administration "informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities." Some $12.9 million in funding set to go to these centers will be impounded by the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“The department is reprioritizing its programmatic activities to ensure that the US secures its position as a leader in critical and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum,” said the message sent to Congressional staff. “As such NIST has determined that these cooperative agreements are no longer aligned with the priorities of the department and NIST.”

Experts have reacted with outrage, pointing out that it makes little sense to enact massive tariffs on virtually all foreign goods, even enacting tariffs that for some reason single out uninhabited Antarctic islands with no manufacturing or trade, while at the same time cutting a program that serves as a lifeline for the same domestic manufacturers Trump presumably wants to step in to fill that void.

“These efforts directly align with the president’s goals to strengthen domestic manufacturing and re-shore production,” said New Mexico MEP's director Jennifer Sinsabaugh.

The Trump administration has gone on a huge spree of defunding federal programs in agencies across the board, as well as mass layoffs of government workers. A series of lawsuits have been filed alleging that these cuts violate the separation of powers.