Macon Symposium: Uncertain Trade Rules Affecting Investment Across Georgia

As Jason Dunn delved deeper into a proposed project that would benefit rural Georgia’s wood sector, an unforeseen problem emerged. 

Tariffs were set to significantly raise the costs of perhaps the biggest line item in the client’s new facility — machinery imported from Germany. 

“I said, ‘There’s nothing I can do; you voted for the whole package,’” Mr. Dunn, executive director of the Fitzgerald-Ben Hill County Industrial Authority, told the prospect. 

He advised the company to “’pay the piper,’ which I hope they do, because we really need this project,” Mr. Dunn said during the 7th Annual Global Trade and Investment Symposium Feb. 19, organized by Global Atlanta and the law offices of Christopher N. Smith in Macon. 

Mr. Dunn’s interaction was just a small example of the unforeseen consequences President Trump’s tariffs, and not just the levies themselves, but also twists in policy that have robbed companies (and communities) of the certainty they need for long-term planning. 

Fitzgerald has felt acutely the pain that has helped animate Mr. Trump’s base: After NAFTA and China’s World Trade Organization entry, the textile-heavy community saw 2,000 jobs leave and its GDP cut in half from 2000 to 2008, Mr. Dunn said. 

“Just sucked it out in eight years,” Mr. Dunn said, perhaps unconsciously referring to 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot’s warning about NAFTA’s potential effects. 

Only last year did local output return to 2000 levels of around $300 million. 

“So it only took 25 years to get it back,” he said, just in time for another shock: USAID cuts affected a $20 million contract from MANA Nutrition, which has a Fitzgerald plant helping fight food shortages for children in Africa and beyond. The contract was eventually honored, but not without a New York Times profile and some political intervention to save Georgia jobs — and African lives. 

Companies in the furthest reaches of Georgia welcome efforts to bring back domestic manufacturing, but many also bristle at policies that make it difficult (or costlier) for U.S. firms to access the inputs they need from around the world to compete, corporate and economic development leaders said during the event at Wesleyan College. 

“We want to onshore as much as we can, but that trade is important,” Mr. Dunn said said during the discussion sponsored by Smith + Howard‘s site selection practice.

Global Supply Chains Supporting Rivian’s $5B Plant

Automaker Rivian has fought through uncertainty on multiple fronts as it has worked toward building a $5 billion Georgia plant that will employ 7,500 people at full capacity in Social Circle, Ga., just east of Atlanta. 

Steel and aluminum levies, tariffs on parts suppliers, questions surrounding a $6 billion Department of Energy loan and the elimination of EV tax credit sales as a revenue stream, have all put pressure on the publicly traded firm looking to ramp up production of its ruggedly refined electric trucks and SUVs.

Re-shoring may be a “noble thing,” but EV makers often need “higher-order” components that can’t be fully sourced domestically, said Andrew Capezzuto, director of corporate affairs for Rivian. 

“We have to go abroad for those parts. And when we are trying to navigate contracts that are multiple years in length and have hundreds of thousands of parts annually, we can’t just flip a switch and have all that be here in the United States and adjust those foreign supply chains here domestically,” Mr. Capezzuto said. 

Electric vehicles, he added, have been unduly politicized here even as adoption has skyrocketed in China and Europe. 

Domestic demand in recent months has been pummeled, though Rivian will launch this spring the R2, its five-passenger mass-market SUV the company sees as its “Model 3 moment,” alluding to the Tesla variant that helped the world’s most valuable automaker move beyond early adopters and niche buyers. 

The R2 will eventually start at $45,000, putting it into a different market niche than the sleek seven-passenger R1 that Mr. Capezzuto parked outside Wesleyan’s Pierce Chapel (Price as outfitted? About $90,000). 

The initial-run R2 unveiled this week put the initial intro price at around $58,000, with the company noting that the cheaper version will hit the market in 2027 as production reaches greater scale. 

Either way, fluctuating costs make it hard for the American company to ramp up from the 42,000+ vehicles it made last year in Illinois to the 400,000 it hopes to churn out in Georgia.  

“Businesses don’t like change. We like predictability. We like stability. From our perspective, if we have a long enough lead time and a long enough runway to make a change, that’s fine. It gives us time to plan, it gives us time to prepare,” Mr. Capezzuto said. “But when you’re seeing massive change within the span of a few weeks or a few months, nobody is situated to navigate that perfectly.” 

Belgium’s View: Investors Need More Convincing

Diplomats are advocating for a return to a similarly measured approach to tending the all-important transatlantic relationship, said Katherine Raeymaekers, consul general of Belgium, who argued it has provided security and economic benefits for 80 years. Georgia is the top state in the U.S. for Belgian companies like Beaulieu and Barco that have created some 5,000 jobs here, as Gov. Brian Kemp acknowledged during a recent trade mission to Brussels.  

Speaking a month after Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland, however, she said communities will now need to more intentionally court European investors.  

“People still want to invest in the U.S., but I think you need to come and convince them a little bit more,” she added. “I think it the job now for Georgia, or any other state for that matter, is trying to rebuild a little bit of confidence that got lost to certain investors.” 

Undermining trust in NATO hasn’t helped, she said, though she suggested that tariffs on Europe so far have been more destructive than ongoing bluster on defense and security. Some 85 percent of Belgian GDP, from flooring to plastics to pharmaceuticals, is driven by international trade.  

“These supply chains are very much intertwined, so changing rapidly has come at a cost, and I think for some, the cost has been transferred to the consumers, unfortunately,” Ms. Raeymaekers said. 

How Georgia’s Biggest Export Is Faring

Ember Bentley, head of the new Georgia Aerospace and Defense Alliance, said the concern for Georgia’s largest export sector is more about workforce than trade policy. 

The alliance, formed by five companies including Gulfstream Aerospace, the state’s largest manufacturer with 15,000 employees. 

“The span of workforce needs that are there — I say it’s GED to PhD; you’ve got everything.” 

Georgia’s Quick Start Program and the Technical College System of Georgia help both foreign and domestic firms tailor training to their workers’ needs, and thoughtfully crafted pipelines like the engineering program at Mercer University, (where the alliance is based) have proven adept at meeting the needs of employers like Robins Air Force Base.

That said, Georgia can still learn a lot from places like Germany and Japan, the latter of which Ms. Bentley, a long-ago protocol director for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, visited with the governor and a Macon group last fall.

Lessons run from soft skills and industrial pride to structured apprenticeship programs that will help the state compete in a “global competition for talent,” where skills like coding and AI will creep into production and operation roles. 

“There’s so much that we can learn from the cultural side of being this globally connected state,” she said. 

Rivian isn’t worried about Hyundai, Kia or coming battery plants siphoning technically skilled labor, noting that Georgia has strategically spread out OEMs around the state and that Quick Start is building Rivian on-site training center that will equip workers from a large catchment area that includes Athens, Atlanta, and possibly even Macon. 

“Having that all on site at our factory is just paramount,” he said, adding that Rivian is also working with technical colleges to enact an EV technician program that would train mechanics to work on its vehicles. 

Once production is up and running, Rivian plans to enact an aggressive Georgia-dependent export strategy, particularly with the R3, a smaller hatchback crossover the company unveiled in 2024 and plans to introduce at the Georgia plant exclusively. (The R2 itself is first being built in Normal, Ill., before moving to the Georgia plant in 2028.) 

In the meantime, Rivian is continuing to build out its sales and support network, and its East Coast headquarters recently opened just above the Krog Street Market in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward. 

Rivian’s success, not just in Social Circle but also in Atlanta, shows the importance of ensuring inbound investors evaluate communities and counties for cultural fit — and their labor and logistics needs — in addition topline financial incentives, said Shelly Carmichael, who leads the Smith + Howard site selection practice.

“We work holistically. We need to work together, and that’s another reason we’re so glad to be here.”

The annual event attracted diplomats from 15 countries and visitors from 20-plus Georgia counties, including many industrial development authority leaders.