Trump Criticizes Trade with a Country that Benefits His Voters

This, of course, represents a continuation of the president’s two most reliable gripes with America’s allies: that they are getting the better of us at trade, and they should be shouldering a heftier financial burden when it comes to defense spending.

Trump was not incorrect in saying that Germany lags behind on its NATO payments. Nor was he off about the trade imbalance—in 2016 the U.S. trade deficit with Germany was roughly $65 billion.

But highlighting those two metrics as a summation of the relationship between the two countries, possibly steering one to think that Germany has somehow duped the United States, is a misleading proposition.

And nowhere, perhaps, is that more evident than here in southeast Tennessee, the backbone of Trump Country, where German automotive giant Volkswagen has created thousands of jobs and helped propel a regional economy.

Opened in 2011, the production lines at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga assembly plant are dedicated to the Passat sedan—well over 500,000 have been built locally—and the brand new Atlas sport utility vehicle.

It would be hard to understate the positive effect the manufacturer has made in the area. Today, based off company-provided statistics, Volkswagen employs 3,450 workers directly at its plant, and upward of another 9,000 indirectly through parts suppliers and ancillary operations. As it happens, the same day the president was jabbing at Germany via Twitter, Volkswagen announced an upcoming jobs fair in Chattanooga to hire 200 new production workers, because the 1,000 brought on board since December 2016 isn’t enough.

Now let’s talk dollars. Every year, Volkswagen awards some $307 million in Tennessee car supply contracts to companies producing goods like seat cushions and floor mats that go in Passats and Atlases, while accounting for a $53.5 million yearly increase in state and local tax revenue. What’s more, Volkswagen estimates they contribute $643 million in annual incomes across the area. That means, according to some crude math, the average Volkswagen or Volkswagen-related employee earns more than $51,000 per year. For perspective, Hamilton County (where Chattanooga is the county seat) has a per capita income under $28,000.

So it makes sense that in July 2014, at an event celebrating Volkswagen’s decision to build the Atlas SUV in Chattanooga—nearly six years to the day of Volkswagen announcing it would build the Passat in town—former city mayor and current U.S. Senator Bob Corker was moved to tears as he congratulated a throng of local leaders. Because the German automaker has, by no use of hyperbole, changed thousands of local lives for the better. Not just with well-paid salaries, but through other endeavors too, like underwriting an impressive roster of non-profit organizations, creating a new degree program in conjunction with the area’s most prominent community college, and sponsoring engineering labs at a slew of public schools.

The Chattanooga city limits mark one of the last Democratic safe havens in the state. Yet even with that, Donald Trump easily carried Hamilton County, surpassing 55 percent of the vote in 2016. More impressively, in five of the six contiguous Tennessee counties, the president hauled in at least 77 percent of the ballots on Election Day.

As for the sixth county? A mere 7 in 10.

Volkswagen’s beneficial imprint bleeds out beyond Hamilton County and is enjoyed by workers and their families all across the region, a region with as much claim to the moniker “Trump Country” as any other place on the map.

It’s also a region whose people, after reading the close of Trump’s Germany Twitter threat—”This will change”—couldn’t be blamed for thinking “hopefully not too much.”

David Allen Martin is a weekly contributor to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.