Economy still center of presidential campaign
Candidates pushed messages across Ohio last week.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden pushed messages of a bright manufacturing future across the Buckeye State last week.
COLUMBUS — The COVID-19 pandemic transformed people’s everyday lives, but all the mask wearing, shuttered fairs and Zoom rallies haven’t disrupted one fundamental truth about presidential campaigning in Ohio: It’s all about the economy.
Both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaigns pushed their messages of a bright manufacturing future across the Buckeye State last week, and their surrogates made it clear that winning in Ohio rests on voters believing their economic plan.
Trump appeared in person at a Whirpool’s largest U.S. factory in Clyde, Ohio, on Thursday to talk, in part, about how he authorized a global tariff on overseas washing machines in January 2018 that benefited the plant.
“You know what I did and here we are today, the most successful plant,” Trump said.
Whirlpool’s problem was foreign manufacturers “dumping” or selling their washing machines below cost in the U.S.
“Unfortunately as Whirlpool won cases against unfairly traded washing machines, foreign trade cheats moved production to other countries to avoid paying the tariffs,” Republican Sen. Rob Portman said in a statement. “First, production moved from Korea and Mexico to China and then to Vietnam and Thailand. This whack-a-mole approach was unsustainable.”
Trump told workers and politicians gathered at the northwest Ohio plant that “Whirlpool begged the
Obama-Biden administration who did nothing,” and their “cries for help fell on deaf ears” until he was elected.
“They didn’t act,” the president said. “They didn’t care, and they never will.”
But Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was quick to point out during his weekly call with reporters that some of the president’s trade policies harmed Ohio businesses.
A few months after signing the global tariff on washing machines, the president raised tariffs on imported steel and aluminum — two key materials for the washing machines Whirlpool manufactures in Clyde.
“He’s not done these in a precise way,” Brown said. “He’s done these in a broad way that’s hurt American consumers.”
Brown was one of several Biden surrogates who held virtual campaign stops across Ohio this week. Every one focused on small businesses, unions and manufacturing.
“We will recover from COVID-19, but we have to make sure everyone is included in that recovery,” Lima Mayor David Berger said during his stop on the virtual tour. “We have to build back better, and Joe Biden has a plan to get us there.”
When the president swept much of the Midwest in November 2016, it was largely on his message of making America and its manufacturing centers great again. Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But Trump took Ohio by 8% —a margin that left many wondering whether the state’s swing status was over.
But the Biden campaign appears to be bullish on Buckeyes.
In July, they made a seven-figure television ad buy in Toledo and Youngstown emphasizing the former vice president’s blue collar roots.
Trump famously told factory workers in Youngstown in 2017: “”Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.” He pledged to help them keep their jobs, but General Motors closed the Lordstown plant in March 2019.
GM announced plans to build a new electric battery cell factory in its place, but that plant will only replace about 25% of the jobs.
“I see a president who has betrayed workers,” Brown said.
Manufacturers added jobs during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, but that growth stalled in 2019 and then the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020.
Trump and Biden both claim to be the best man to lead the country out of these health and economic crises.
The president leans on his experience in the private sector while Biden talks about how he and former President Barack Obama put the economy back on track after the
Great Recession.
Both men claim the other has broken promises to the American worker.
“It takes some hubris to hold a made-in-America event for Joe Biden who promises to raise taxes on 82% of American families, enact job killing environmental policies and has embraced the radical wing of the Democrat party,” said Dan Lusheck, the spokesman for Trump’s Ohio campaign.
But Dan Boone, a Biden supporter and president of United Steelworkers local 979 in Cleveland, said 500 of his members were laid off in April as steel prices continued to plummet.
’(Trump’s) policies have been ineffective,” Boone said. “We were excited about his policies when they came out, but talk is cheap.”