Many in Youngstown, Ohio, believe the president-elect will tackle the town’s decline this time. Others are worried about his character flaws. Their concerns help explain how he returned to power – and how his second term might play out

The last time Donald Trump was president, he travelled to Youngstown, Ohio, among the most depressed of America’s rust belt cities, and promised voters the impossible.

The high-paying steel, railroad and car industry jobs that once made Youngstown a hard-living, hard-drinking blue-collar boom town were coming back, he said. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he crowed to a rapturous crowd in 2017. “We’re going to fill up those factories – or rip ”em down and build brand new ones”.

None of that happened. Indeed, within 18 months, General Motors (GM) announced that it was suspending operations at its one remaining ­manufacturing plant outside Youngstown, throwing 5,000 jobs into jeopardy in a community with little else to cling to. Trump’s reaction was to say the closure didn’t matter, because the jobs would be replaced “in, like, two minutes”.

That, too, did not happen. People moved away, marriages broke down, depression soared and, locals say, a handful of people took their own lives.

“The Democrats and the Republicans are all a den of crooks. Only one side lies about being crooks, and one doesn’t. If you’re going to be a crook, I’d rather know it than be lied to.”

  • talEnglish
    41·
    9 hours ago

    kagis

    It sounds like he’s probably referring to the Lordstown Motors auto plant that closed.

    Apparently, some of the facility is now doing EV-related work.

    It sounds like originally, there were about 4,500 people, and now about half that work at the new factory, and most of the rest were relocated by GM.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-town-grieving-lost-jobs-voters-are-deeply-divided-president-n1155596

    Most of the 4,500 workers who lost their jobs last year, and in two earlier waves of layoffs since 2017, have started over in GM plants in unfamiliar towns hundreds of miles away.

    https://atlaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Case-Study-Ultium-Cells-Ohio-Final.pdf

    Ultium Cells Ohio is a $2.6 billion joint venture between General Motors (GM) and LG Energy Solution (LGES). The companies announced their plans for the facility in December 2019 and, as of June 2024, there are nearly 2,200 hourly and salaried workers on site, surpassing Ultium’s employment expectations when they first announced the facility.

    GM relocated 1,300 hourly employees [4]. This was on top of shift cuts in 2016 and 2018 that impacted 1,250 and 1,500 employees respectively [5]

    So while this is probably quite bad advice aimed at scoring political points:

    “They’re all coming back!” Trump told a cheering crowd at a rally in nearby Youngstown in 2017.

    “Don’t move! Don’t sell your house!” he said.

    Assuming that Trump’s campaign had any idea that this would happen at the time he was speaking – and apparently there was federal subsidy (albeit from the Biden-era IRA) involved:

    Support from the federal government, including a $2.5 billion loan from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, have been and will be essential to the construction and growth of Ultium Cells facilities in Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan.

    …that might be uncharacteristically accurate for Trump in that new jobs equal to maybe half the number of jobs that exited had been there (though not necessarily the same workers or skillset, and personally, I wouldn’t have stayed around a closed auto plant for five years hoping that someone willing to hire me would show up and ramp up hiring and want to hire me).