GOP’s Rust Belt revival fading — will it matter?
TOLEDO, Ohio — President Trump once promised that coal and steel would be the beating heart of a revived U.S. economy — a nostalgic vision that helped carry him to victory three years ago in the industrial Midwest.
But a year away from Election Day, that promised renaissance is not materializing and both sectors are faltering in ways that are painfully familiar and politically significant.
Recent data shows manufacturing jobs are disappearing across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, states critical to Trump’s reelection chances. On Tuesday, Murray Energy, a major mining firm with close ties to the president, became the latest of many coal companies to file for bankruptcy this year, rattling communities across Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. The news followed recent layoffs at a prominent steel manufacturer in northeastern Ohio and General Motors’ final decision this fall to shutter its massive plant at Lordstown, Ohio.
The turmoil in the manufacturing and mining sectors threatens to undermine Trump’s claim to a booming economy — the bedrock of his and his Republican allies’ campaign strategy — in places where it matters most. While Trump’s economy is benefiting hightech manufacturing and energy sectors in other regions, the manufacturing slump across the Rust Belt may test whether Trump can retain his appeal to bluecollar workers without having fully delivered on his promise to fatten their bank accounts.
“I don’t think that Ohio is just a lock in the Republican’s column, nor do I think that bluecollar voters are settled on who they’re likely to select,” said Robert Alexander, a political scientist at Ohio Northern University. “There is a lot of economic angst still in the state.”
Recent elections haven’t shown that angst to be aimed at Republicans. After Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points — the largest margin of any presidential candidate since 1988 — Republicans fared better in Ohio than in many other states in last year’s midterms, nabbing every statewide office but one. Their winning formula was based on overwhelming support from workingclass, white voters in small communities.
Murray Energy is based in St. Clairsville, Ohio, a small city near the West
Virginia and Pennsylvania borders in a county that voted for Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of 40 percentage points.
The company’s former CEO Bob Murray is a Trump donor. Murray openly pressured Trump to issue an emergency order that would have exempted his struggling company from environmental regulations he said were burdensome. Trump flirted with that idea but never approved it.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy expert, seized on the news as evidence of Trump failing his voters.
“He made promises to working people all across this country that he would be there on their behalf. Instead he’s been there for the lobbyists, he’s been there for the giant corporations, he’s been there to help make the rich richer and leave everyone else behind,” she said.