Workers at the Ford factory in Cologne in the 1930s, left, contrast with employees in May 2025, right, displaying a banner reading “This plant is on strike!” during the factory’s first-ever walkout.
Source: Getty Images
US and China Flip the Global Script as Capital Flows Reverse
As the US draws back, China is again dispersing capital globally, leading the rest of the world to confront a fundamental change in their economic relationships with both superpowers.
The Ford Motor Co. plant in Cologne, Germany, has been a fixture of the city’s Rhine River waterfront since 1931, when Model A’s started rolling off the production line. It’s a legacy of what once felt like a perpetual age of corporate expansionism that defined America’s optimistic and ubiquitous place in the world as a source of capital and jobs.
These days, Ford’s Cologne outpost is a faltering emblem. The company announced in September it would be cutting another 1,000 jobs at what is now an electric-vehicle plant — a quarter of the workforce — and go down to a single production shift in January. In a strategic pullback from Europe, Ford has stopped production altogether at another plant in Germany and chosen to offer only a few models on the continent.