At the height of the U.S. trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas and dog food.
But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with the current administration's government priorities.
The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which administers the program to help manufacturers, emailed lawmakers to say that it would not be paying out nearly $12.9 million that had been due overall this week to MEP centers in 10 states, according to Democratic staff of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology who spoke on on the condition of anonymity.
Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.