SunPower starts laying off hundreds of workers

SunPower has started laying off over 200 workers from its R&D and marketing units to decrease operational costs by 10 percent.

The company estimates that it will lose USD $50 million this year, due to the new Trump tariffs.

This amounts to about one-sixth of the company’s overall operating costs.

The cuts made by the publicly traded company, which is based in San Jose, Calif., are largely an effort to stop the bleeding from the new costs associated with the 30 percent tariffs.

SunPower estimates, with fear, that next year’s losses will be even more staggering, predicting the firm could lose closer to USD $100 million.

Trump approved the tariff in a January 2018 executive order, claiming: “You’re going to have people getting jobs again and we’re going to make our own product again. It’s been a long time”.

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2 Comments

Gary says:

6 March, 2018 at 8:13 pm

you cannot ascribe the layoffs to tariffs….only to fundamental business responses to changing markets. the people of SunPower are very talented. recovery is imminent.
1. Derick A. Lila | MSc, MA says:
  
  6 March, 2018 at 10:34 pm
  
  Yep! I second that thought. SunPower will bounce back indeed.