A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators from the Midwest on Thursday asked the Commerce Department to investigate major agricultural machinery manufacturers, saying they paid shareholders handsomely while offshoring jobs.
Sens. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, and Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to open an investigation under a law that allows tariffs to be used for national security purposes.
John Deere, Caterpillar and the Wisconsin-based Case New Holland had all laid off U.S. workers in recent years while moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The moves hollowed out Midwest industrial towns but made the companies enormous profits, Baldwin and Moreno wrote.
“These companies should not be allowed to eliminate American jobs, pay Mexican workers poverty wages, and then ship products back to the U.S. for additional profit on the backs of our communities,” they wrote. “They argue that offshoring is necessary to remain competitive, but when it comes time to pay executives or shareholders, they are never short of money.”
The companies have all delivered generous payments to shareholders in recent years, the senators said. John Deere has paid $8.4 billion, CNH has paid $1.7 billion and Caterpillar has paid $18.2 billion through dividends and stock buybacks, they wrote.
But payouts for investors came at the expense of their blue-collar workforce, Baldwin and Moreno wrote.
CNH laid off 220 workers from its Racine, Wisconsin, facility in 2024 and moved production to Mexico. All of the roughly 200 CNH workers in a Burlington, Iowa, facility are set to lose their jobs after the company announced in January it would close the plant. And John Deere laid off more than 3,600 union employees after moving production from Iowa to Mexico, the senators said.
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