Trump and DOGE Defund Program That Boosted American Manufacturing for Decades

At the height of the US trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. 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.

But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities.

The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which administers the program to help manufacturers, emailed lawmakers to say that it would not be paying out nearly $12.9 million that had been due overall this week to MEP centers in 10 states, according to Democratic staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology who spoke on on the condition of anonymity.

“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,” according to the email seen by WIRED. “As such NIST has determined that these cooperative agreements are no longer aligned with the priorities of the department and NIST.”

The Democratic congressional aides and heads of MEP centers in multiple states believe that abandoning support for the program runs counter to Trump’s long-standing goals of boosting domestic manufacturing and winning the ongoing trade war with China. While the president has demonstrated a preference for punitive measures such as tariffs over subsidies to increase American manufacturing capacity, his defunding of the centers could leave US small businesses without the support they need to take advantage of such policies, advocates for the MEP program say.

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

Project 2025, a proposed road map for the current Trump administration authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, had called for eliminating federal subsidies for the manufacturing program and letting the private sector “more properly” carry out its business advisory services. But as of Wednesday, the Department of Commerce and NIST had not announced a plan to privatize it or shared how the withheld funds would be repurposed.

NIST did not respond to a request for comment. The manufacturing program is one of a number of NIST initiatives that the Commerce Department has moved to scale back or eliminate in recent weeks as Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency work to dismantle a whole range of long-standing agencies and programs run by the US federal government.

Perhaps anticipating that DOGE might be coming for the program, NIST added a graphic to the top of its MEP webpage in February highlighting how it contributes to the US economy, according to screenshots from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

NIST spends under $200 million annually on the MEP program, with most of the money passed on to states and Puerto Rico in batches of payments. The congressional aides tell WIRED that they expect all remaining centers will lose their funding over the next year or so, as their next checks come due.

Depending on the state, centers are operated by universities, government agencies, or independent nonprofits. States also help pay for the MEP program, but the congressional aides believe it would be difficult in many states—especially smaller ones—to make up for the loss of federal funding.

Carrie Hines, president and CEO of the American Small Manufacturers Coalition, which represents all of the state help centers, says businesses pay market rates for the personalized consulting they offer. “This is not a handout,” she says. Traditional consulting firms may not be able to assist these small businesses or even exist in some regions, she adds. “We fill that unique void of technical assistance, with boots on the factory floor,” Hines says.

Wyoming’s help center, known as Manufacturing Works, was among the organizations that on Tuesday did not receive some $700,000 in funding it had been expecting from NIST. The other states affected include Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Dakota. “Those 10 centers were blindsided,” Hines says.

Jodie Mjoen, CEO and president of North Dakota’s MEP center Impact Dakota, says he’s begun working with partners on finding new ways to support its 21 current projects across 93 manufacturers. These companies, according to Mjoen, are trying to contend with tariffs and other regulations, deploy more AI and automation, and introduce new skills to their employees. “This is what it’s all about,” he says. “Implementing innovative emerging technology solutions” and keeping the “US manufacturing supply chain thriving and expanding.”

Sinsabaugh of New Mexico MEP says the cuts “will have real and lasting negative impacts on the manufacturing ecosystem, both in our state and nationally.”

Officials for centers in the other states did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

US representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware who also sits on the science committee, tells WIRED that “Trump is ripping opportunity away from Delaware’s working families, and I’ll fight with everything I have to reverse this reckless and cruel decision.”

Case studies published by NIST and state partners show that advisers associated with the help centers have walked businesses through how to adopt cybersecurity measures and build more resilient factory lines, or simply get executive teams to align on company priorities. Popular brands featured on NIST’s website that say they have benefited from the help centers include Dot’s, a maker of pretzel snacks owned by Hershey, and Purina, a dog food division of Nestlé.

The help centers also link businesses to other resources. In the case of Pertech Industries, a Riverton, Wyoming-based manufacturer of specialized printers that struggled to find workers skilled at soldering, the local MEP office connected it to a training company that later started offering a soldering program. The office helped the training firm pay for it with state funding. Pertech did not respond to a request for comment.

MEP’s work is not without alleged faults. Last year, the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General accused NIST of poor oversight of a survey program it uses to estimate the benefits of the consulting services. After reviewing about $7.3 billion of the $18.8 billion in new and retained sales that NIST claimed from MEP work nationwide in a recent year, the inspector general found that $3.5 billion of the sample came from unreliable data.

In 2023, the inspector general flagged NIST for its alleged inadequate oversight of spending by state centers. It called for NIST to limit salaries for officials at state centers and better manage conflicts of interest in cases where board members of state centers also run companies that do business with them. NIST disputed the allegations in both the 2023 and 2024 investigations, but told the inspector general that new policies and processes would be considered.

An employee at one local center on the East Coast who knows the survey process well acknowledges that the data collection has some flaws. But even after removing some questionable results, the data shows that the MEP system is generating a sizable return on investment, according to the employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. They say many startups would not be able to afford the training, certification, and policy drafting programs their center provides without government subsidization.

“It isn’t a perfect system,” the East Coast employee says, “but having access to dedicated staff that are experienced in navigating challenges small companies are facing, sometimes for the first time, can be the difference between that company shutting down or continuing to grow.”