It also may justify President Trump’s declaration Wednesday that he has become a “wartime president” leading the fight against an “invisible enemy” in the virus.

Automakers in the United States and Europe are idling plants in response to the crisis, echoing the industrial shutdown in China that reverberated through global supply chains earlier this year and adding to the case that a global recession may already be under way.

The economic impact of the growing coronavirus outbreak is shifting from service-driven industries like hotels and restaurants to the manufacturing sector on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to a synchronized shutdown of heavy industry that historians and industry experts say is unlike any seen since the 1940s.


Among Trump’s moves was his authorization of powers under the Defense Production Act, which was established at the time of the Korean War to allow the government to direct industrial capacity. Larry Kudlow, his top economic adviser, later told Fox News that the administration was already in discussions with General Motors Co. and other automakers to start producing ventilators vital to treating people affected by the virus.

Such a move to retool and shift production dramatically would echo the industrial transformation seen in the 1940s as factories moved from producing consumer goods like cars to turning out tanks and guns for the war effort on both sides of the Atlantic.

But since then, experts couldn’t recall a similar synchronized shutdown in such a huge portion of the global auto industry. The closures in Europe and the United States announced this week follow hits the industry has taken in other big producing nations like China, Japan, and South Korea.

“I don’t know that there is an analog in recent history. World War II might be the best analogy,” said Kristin Dziczek, head of research at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Every automaker? Every region in the world? I don’t think that has ever happened.”


Data released Thursday gave a glimpse of the deterioration that’s coming. Filings for US unemployment benefits rose by 70,000 to 281,000 in the week ended March 14, according to Labor Department figures. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s survey of factories showed conditions in the area worsened in March by the most on record.

Timothy Guinnane, an economic historian at Yale University, argues the better parallel may be with what came after the end of the war in 1945, specifically with post-war Germany, “where the whole country came to a halt for a few months.”

Guinnane argues the shutdown now under way in Europe and the United States follows an encouraging example in China where life has started to return to normal after a six-week closure. Plus, he said, it’s not clear — yet — that there will be longer-lasting damage to the US economy.

“If you waved a hand and got rid of the virus tomorrow we’d be back to normal in a week,” Guinnane said. “So it’s not like a war.”

That may be the hopeful view. JPMorgan Chase & Co. economists titled a note to clients about the global slowdown “The day the earth stood still.”

“There is no longer doubt that the longest global expansion on record will end this quarter,” they wrote.

Dziczek says a week of lost auto sales in the United States alone is equivalent to losing 94,400 jobs, $7.3 billion in personal income, and $2 billion in tax revenue.


The damage to the auto sector this time will depend on how long the shutdowns last. But the auto sector around the world, Dziczek said, is in far better shape than it was in 2008 — when the global financial crisis led to government bailouts and a grinding crisis that saw mass layoffs and the permanent closure of many plants.

The shutdowns this time, however, are also coming after a bad 2019 for manufacturers around the globe. Many were battered by the impact of Trump’s trade wars and tariffs on supply chains and a slump in business investment. Europe’s industrial giant, Germany, was teetering on the edge of recession before the coronavirus crisis hit.

US manufacturers saw their production contract by 0.2 percent in 2019.The path forward looks grimmer still. China’s manufacturing output fell 15.7 percent in January and February from a year earlier, according to official data earlier this week. The result is that China is now expected to record its slowest growth since 1976, the year Mao Zedong died and the Cultural Revolution ended.