As the price of rubber slips on the global market, Firestone — a company founded in Ohio with nine decades in this West African country — is shedding large swaths of its staff to cope with what it calls “continued and unsustainable losses.” The drawdown threatens to rip a seismic hole in Liberia’s floundering economy, analysts say, opening the latest chapter in the country’s long and complicated history with American-rooted power brokers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/firestone-tires-built-liberias-economy-now-painful-layoffs-are-sowing-fear-for-the-future/2020/01/01/2895990a-0ae4-11ea-a49f-9066f51640f6_story.html