LORDSTOWN, Ohio -- General Motors plans to slash 14,000 jobs, including more than 1,400 here as it ends production of the Chevrolet Cruze compact car in March, dealing a devastating hit to an already battered Mahoning Valley.

The Detroit-based automaker announced Monday that it will idle its Lordstown assembly plant, along with similar operations in Detroit and Ontario, as it moves away from its once top-selling line of cars toward a greater emphasis on SUVs and trucks.

GM also plans to cease operations at transmission plants outside of Baltimore and Detroit. The decisions, and broader corporate cost-cutting, will put thousands of blue-collar workers in peril and even more salaried positions on the chopping block.

Though GM will drop production of the Cruze in Lordstown, the company isn’t officially closing the plant - a glimmer of hope for workers and politicians who believe something else could be built there in the future.

But Monday’s news was hardly good. It came as yet another blow to Trumbull County, which has lost 20,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. The Lordstown plant downsized from three shifts to one over the last two years, eliminating more than 3,000 jobs and raising concerns about the 6.2 million-square-foot factory’s future.

"This is brutal,'' said U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents this slice of Northeast Ohio. "General Motors, the very company bailed out by American taxpayers, is screwing its workers. There isn’t a neighborhood in the Mahoning Valley that won’t be affected by this.''

Chevy Cruze will disappear

During a conference call with analysts and investors, Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive officer, characterized the announcements as part of the automaker’s drive to become “more agile, resilient and profitable." She said changing consumer preferences are behind the company’s shift away from cars and toward crossover vehicles, SUVs and trucks – a move that echoes similar production cuts, and job reductions, announced by Ford Motor Co. earlier this year.

Barra confirmed that, sometime after production ceases at Lordstown on March 1, the Cruze will disappear from U.S. showrooms. Dhivya Suryadevara, the company’s chief financial officer, said GM is phasing out slower-selling, “lower-margin” vehicles in favor of more profitable products.

The company expects to save approximately $6 billion by the end of 2020 between idling the plants and cutting jobs, including 8,000 salaried and executive positions. GM anticipates that it will quickly recoup its up-front spending, which the company will fund by adding onto an existing line of credit.

“We are very focused on executing with speed to transform the company so we’re well-prepared not only for tomorrow but into the future,” Barra said during the conference call.

Hope for Lordstown, or a ghost town?

At 9:30 a.m. Monday, company officials told workers that the Lordstown plant will stop making the Cruze, a car once emblematic of GM’s rebound from the Great Recession and its 2009 bankruptcy. Officials said the plant would be in a "non-allocated status,'' meaning it would sit idle without a new product.

"We really don’t know anything else,'' said Bob Ward, a Warren resident and 20-year employee at the plant, after his shift ended Monday afternoon. "We knew all along that changes needed to be made to the plant. But we thought that the Cruze would still be built for a few more years. We’re trying to be optimistic.''

Christina DeFelice of Poland also said she would try to be optimistic. But she admitted that the past year has been hard. She worked for GM and a supplier for 22 years but was laid off in June from the Lordstown plant’s second shift.

"This is devastating,'' DeFelice said of the production shutdown. "Without GM, this area would be a ghost town.''

Dave Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, agreed: "This is one of the darkest days we’ve seen here.''

GM stock gets a boost

As employees and union representatives bemoaned the news, investors cheered it. Trading of GM’s shares was briefly halted Monday morning after reports trickled out about the job cuts and production stoppages. After trading resumed, GM’s stock ended the day up 4.8 percent, at $37.66, its highest level since August.

That irked Ryan.

"The biggest crock is that GM’s stock is up 5 percent,'' Ryan said, reading from his cellphone shortly after 1 p.m. in the union hall. "First, it gets a government bailout, then it gets tax breaks, and now it gets an increase in its stock. Tell me this economy works for normal people.''

Ryan said the company has been unfair to taxpayers and its workers. In late 2008, as the automaker teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government said it would step in with a bailout. The Bush and Obama administrations spent roughly $50 billion to boost the company’s bottom line, a move that saved more than 1 million jobs. The government sold off the last of its GM shares in late 2013, reporting a $10 billion-plus loss to taxpayers.

Trump wants GM to stay in Lordstown

On Monday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he is putting pressure on GM. He said the country has been good to the automaker, and he said he told Barra that the company needs to "get a car that is selling well and put it back'' into the Ohio plant. He said he believes that could happen soon.

"You better get back in there soon; that's Ohio,'' Trump told reporters.

But Ryan blamed Trump for many of Lordstown’s problems.

"He needs to put his damn Twitter account down and roll up his sleeves and get to work,'' Ryan said. "He campaigned here. He said he would open the steel mills and open the coal mines. He needs to pay attention to what is going on.''

Ryan said GM has yet to offer plans on the future of the plant or the possibility it will bring another product here. He said the idling not only will affect Lordstown but also will hurt 30 suppliers to the plant from across the state.

In the UAW hall Monday, away from the crowd, Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill served up a positive spin. He said his village is prepared for the economic hit it will face, but he also refuses to believe that this will be the end of manufacturing at the 52-year-old facility.

"They’re saying they are ceasing production of the Chevy Cruze,'' Hill said. "No one has said they’re shuttering the plant. I’m holding on to that.''

Plain Dealer reporters Michelle Jarboe and Jo Ellen Corrigan contributed to this story.