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Alongside his demands, Trump has already started throwing his weight around, hinting at massive tariffs against international partners as part of his way of Making America Great Again. It could spell trouble for some engineering sectors – and those in the industry are watching on warily.
“There’s an unpredictability for sure, yet UK manufacturing is used to that with what the world and the government have thrown at us in recent times,” says Rowan Crozier, CEO of Brandauer, a Birmingham metal stamping service. “Nobody can be certain that a new Trump administration won’t do something completely off the wall.” His erratic decision-making has already had an impact on businesses and currencies around the world.
Yet throughout the chaos, there are opportunities for engineering, reckons Crozier. One thing Trump has always had a soft spot for is building projects and big bits of infrastructure – both of which could be beneficial for engineers. “He’s a businessman, and my expectation is that tariffs will be a bit more strategically thought through,” says Crozier. “Within that I think there are underlying opportunities, which might mean we get a bigger segment of the supply chain.”
Specialist engineering firms like Brandauer could be sitting pretty under a Trump administration, its CEO believes. “If you’re making a niche product in a critical supply chain and there’s nowhere else that can do it, then the Americans are not going to shoot themselves in the foot and halt complex assemblies for the sake of ticking a box in a Trump campaign speech,” he says. “What we do requires a huge amount of skill, talent, technology and innovation that you can’t just switch on overnight in the States.”
Other areas within the engineering sector could benefit from Trump’s proclivity for big projects. One of the first pronouncements was to set the US on course for a mission to Mars, a big boost to both the domestic and international aerospace engineering sectors.
“It seems very likely that Trump’s administration and policies will favour commercial partnerships and exploration for [the] US to maintain its leadership role in space, with missions like the Mars Sample Return relying on private partners more,” says Yang Gao, professor of robotics at King’s College London.
Gao points out that space has always been a focus of the president’s, which should be good news for the engineering sector – as long as key geopolitical issues can be quelled. “In his last term, Trump created the US Space Force dedicated to space security,” he says. “If a similar militarised or unilateral approach continues in his new term, it could potentially introduce international instability in space, in opposition to international governing principles set out in documents like the UN's Outer Space Treaty.”
He continues: “The Trump administration also proposed cuts to NASA’s Earth science programmes, including missions studying climate change and environmental monitoring. If the pattern of executive orders cutting funding to Earth science and basic research continue, it could hurt broader scientific progress.”
Similarly, while oil and gas engineering – including building and maintaining rigs – will likely benefit from Trump’s dictated direction of drilling for new hydrocarbons, the companies that have spent the last 10 years or more specialising in renewables in anticipation of a broader energy transition may find themselves struggling. Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency notably excluded wind and solar energy.
Likewise, tamping down on enthusiasm for electric vehicles (EVs) could stall growth for specialist manufacturers, despite Elon Musk’s proximity to the president.
The engineering industry recognises the stakes are high under a Trump administration – and that the risks are as numerous as the potential rewards. The American Council of Engineering Companies was quick to issue congratulations to the new president shortly after he took office. Implicit in their message was the key thing that will drive the next four years under Donald Trump: making friends and influencing the president will need to be at the core of everything they do.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.