Noah Smith, Columnist

This Strange Expansion Might Set Up a Mundane Recession

The economy never quite recovered from the financial crisis, but signs suggest the next slump will be pretty routine.

November 28, 2018 at 12:00 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

An inkling of toruble.
Photographer: John Gress/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

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General Motors Co. just announced the closing of four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada. Three of the factories are in Michigan and Ohio — states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016, in part thanks to his promise to bring back American manufacturing jobs. So much for that.

GM has long been a troubled company, requiring a government bailout in the Great Recession and struggling to build popular cars ever since. But the recent plant closures may have a cause that goes beyond GM’s boardroom. Auto sales in the U.S. have declined from their level of three years ago and have taken a considerable drop from their peak in 2017: