Ohio's MAGNET Cuts Half Its Staff With Trump Administration Freeze

Despite pleas from 250 manufacturers, Ohio’s governor, a U.S. senator and a U.S. representative, no cavalry has marched in to rescue Ohio’s pioneering Manufacturing Extension Partnership from a Trump administration funding freeze that also extends to state matching funds.

Finding itself without the $5.7 million that Congress had already allocated for 2026, as well as 2025 funds that never arrived, Northeast Ohio’s MAGNET—the most active and by far the largest of the six MEP offices in the state—is no longer a Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

The MAGNET board voted on January 9 to make staff cuts and draw from the organization’s reserves to make up the operating difference from the federal funds for the time being.

MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network) has a laid off nearly half of its full-time staff—37 of its 76 employees—in the past two weeks.

“It’s been incredibly painful,” said MAGNET CEO and president Ethan Karp.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, an office of the U.S. Department of Commerce, announced the funding freeze in a letter to the Ohio MEP on Dec. 5, 2025. NIST said the freeze was due to reporting errors discovered in an ongoing audit that began 19 months ago. No findings from the audit have been released; NIST listed five reporting errors in a Dec. 5 letter but has provided no further detail—and none of those errors were related to MAGNET.

IndustryWeek requests to interview NIST officials on the findings have thus far been met with emailed statements.

“The decision to suspend the agreement with OH MEP, which is administered by the State of Ohio’s Department of Development, was made after careful consideration of serious issues that were brought to our attention,” the Department said in an email to IndustryWeek for this story. “We are unable to share specifics at this time; however, our justifications for the suspension were communicated to OH MEP.”

The director of Ohio’s MEP program, Aaron Patrick, referred all questions to the communications office of the Ohio Department of Development. The Ohio DOD states that “we recognize the important role the MEP program plays in supporting Ohio manufacturers” and that it “repeatedly sought additional information and supporting evidence from the Department of Commerce. However, no further information has been provided.”

Karp said the layoffs include cutting most of its engagement functions as well as other roles—including full-time staffers in partnership engagement, business development, fundraising, some engineering functions, a finance director, a data manager and two marketing roles. The cuts are about 60% technical services, as well as 40% workforce and talent development programs that depend largely on non-MEP funding.

MAGNET, the largest of six offices in Ohio's now-former MEP network, will continue operating with a robust network of partners in the region and stay in its headquarters in Cleveland—a donated former Cleveland Public Schools building that Karp says has low overhead. The building and site were remediated with a $500,000 low-interest loan from the city and included an $18 million renovation with partners including manufacturing corporations, foundations and civic organizations like the Cleveland Science Center and Cleveland Metroparks.

“We’re not closing,” said MAGNET president and CEO Ethan Karp. “We have the cash reserves to be able to do that. I’m very hopeful. I believe we can be stronger. But that does not diminish the pain and frustration.”