Why GE Appliances will make more washing machines in Kentucky instead of China. It’s not what you think

Some of President Donald Trump’s steepest tariffs are on products like washing machines, and on Thursday, GE Appliances said it would spend a half a billion dollars to make even more of them in the United States.

Some of President Donald Trump’s steepest tariffs are on products like washing machines, and on Thursday, GE Appliances said it would spend a half a billion dollars to make even more of them in the United States. Tariffs, however, weren’t the driving factor behind the decision, the company’s CEO says, but they did serve as an accelerant. GE Appliances announced it would spend $490 million to move some washing machine production from China and build a high-tech clothes care operation at its massive industrial park and headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, where it already churns out washers and dryers for the US market. The move of more than a dozen front-load washer models comes as US trade policy uncertainty has reached a high-stakes fever pitch as Trump’s July 9 tariffs deadline approaches. GE Appliances move that is expected to be complete in 2027 and add 800 jobs, has been in the works for six years — shortly after a new line of front-load washers launched in 2019 — and follows a several-year stretch of high-dollar investments made to bolster the company’s US manufacturing footprint, CEO Kevin Nolan told CNN. “We’ve had a strategy that making appliances in America makes sense; it’s an economic thing, and it’s also how we can serve our customers in a better, more efficient way,” Nolan said, adding that GE appliances is “not a company that was saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to outsource everything, and oh my God, now we’ve got to bring it back.’”