And so it is, from sea to shining sea, the great machinery of American enterprise is coughing smoke and sputtering to a halt with a frequency not witnessed since the darkest days of our last economic calamity.
The bankruptcy courts are, as they say, open for business, their dockets swollen with the casualties of what can only be described as a man-made weather system of economic chaos.
The promise was a renaissance, a protection of the nation’s industrial heart.
The reality, according to the cold ledger of the year, is a harvest of failure, with over seven hundred companies seeking shelter from a storm of their own government’s concoction.
Americans are spending $1,800 a year more due to the impact of tariffs and consumer confidence tumbled around 28 percent year over year in November, according to a survey from the University of Michigan.
We are told the economy is a robust engine, firing on all cylinders with growth figures that sparkle in official reports.
Yet on the ground, in the precincts of actual making and moving and selling, a different story unfolds. It is a tale of two countries: one of abstract statistics and the other of shuttered storefronts and cancelled orders.
This situation reflects a worsening impact of Trump’s policies, which shuttered 163,735 businesses during his first term.
Nearly 60 percent of the businesses that closed nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic are never reopening again.
J.C. Penney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020 amid a drop in sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Second Trump Slump is likely to be a bonanza for wealthy speculators, who buy up the pieces of distressed companies at fire sale prices, adding to the historic level of inequality in America.
The industrials—the very manufacturers and builders we were promised would thrive—are now leading the parade into insolvency, caught in a vise of escalating tariffs on the materials they need and consumers too pinched to bear the resulting price.
The administration’s ever-shifting trade edicts, delivered with the predictability of a roulette wheel, have made a mockery of strategic planning.
As one beleaguered solar company noted in its bankruptcy filing, it was felled by “steep tariffs on imported materials” coupled with the withdrawal of the very incentives that made its business viable.
The professor’s diagnosis is apt: a “perfect storm” deliberately seeded.
The saying holds that in times of prosperity and in times of adversity, people still raise a glass, but maybe not so much anymore.
Several U.S. distilleries filed for bankruptcy this year, most recently A.M. Scott Distillery of Troy, Ohio, which sought Chapter 11 protection on December 22. They followed other filings throughout the year, including Luca Mariano Distillery and its parent company in August; Devils River and JJ Pfister Distilling in May; House Spirits Distillery in April; and both Boston Harbor Distillery and Lee Spirits Co. in March.
On the main streets and in the malls, the hollowing out continues.
The stores that once supplied the small joys and minor luxuries—a bauble from Claire’s, a craft from Joann—are being boarded up, victims of a consumer now rationing every dollar for bread and rent.
These are the canaries in the coal mine of consumer sentiment, which has plummeted by nearly a third.
The experts note a painful contradiction: the grand economic numbers are buoyed by the spending of the wealthy and a frenzy around artificial intelligence, while the bedrock businesses of everyday life are left to drown.
“These companies are acutely aware of the affordability crisis confronting the average American,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University’s school of management. “They are doing their best to offset the cost of tariffs and higher interest rates but can only do so much. Those with pricing power will pass on the costs over time … others will fold.”
Among the devastated businesses during the first half of 2025, were a spike of “mega bankruptcies,” or filings by corporations with over $1 billion in assets.
They are, as Sonnenfeld observes, acutely aware of the affordability crisis, swallowing costs until they can swallow no more.
The result is a grim, Darwinian culling as Trickle-Down Reaganomics comes crashing on the heads on those Americans who are victims of the 50-year class war unleashed by Republicans and their neoliberal Democratic collaborators.
The architects of this policy profess a ruthless pragmatism, a necessary short-term pain for long-term gain.
But from any other vantage point, the pain is evident and widespread, while the gain remains a specter, a theory as yet unrealized in the ledger of jobs saved or factories reopened.
What we see, clear and present, is a landscape littered with the wreckage of once-viable enterprises, from truck makers to airlines, hammered by a battery of unpredictable costs and a regulatory environment that shifts with the political wind.
The narrative of strength rings hollow in the echo of the bankruptcy gavel.
The great American economy, that resilient engine, is proving sturdy enough to withstand many things—but the compounding chaos of its own stewardship may be its most formidable test yet.
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