Whirlpool Goes to Washington, Cost of Washing Machines Rises

You are going to pay more for your next washing machine. To understand why, let's look at what happened at Whirlpool's headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich., in 2011. The company was feeling pressure from foreign competition. Its stock price had fallen by half. It had announced plans to slash 5,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce.Whirlpool had bid to make Kenmore front-load washing machines for Sears, a longtime client headquartered just a couple hours away outside Chicago, across Lake Michigan. But Sears awarded the work to LG, the South Korean electronics conglomerate. Sears told Whirlpool its bid was 9 percent too high. Losing that bid, Whirlpool executives later said, cost their company $260 million in expected revenue.Faced with robust, lower-cost overseas competition from LG and from Samsung, another Korean electronics conglomerate, Whirlpool in December 2011 turned to Washington for help. Executives said LG and Samsung were unfairly pricing their washing machines too low and sought a tariff on competitors' products. That process culminated this January, when the Trump administration sided with Whirlpool and approved new tariffs on foreign-made washing machines.