Days before Donald Trump would secure the presidency with the help of voters from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, he made a promise to supporters: to restore manufacturing in the United States.
“We are going to start making things again,” then-candidate Trump pledged at an Oct. 31, 2016, campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Voters answered his rallying cry to make America, and American factories, great again and catapulted Trump from presidential hopeful to the president. However, three years later, the same states crucial to his electoral upset are experiencing industrial job losses amid a slowdown in the manufacturing industry.
The Institute for Supply Management’s U.S. manufacturing purchasing managers’ index reported factory activity in September slumped to a 10-year low. It also marked the second consecutive month of contraction as the industry continues to take a hit from the protracted trade war with China that, until recently, showed little sign of abating.
The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, reported manufacturing production declined 0.5% in September, the second decrease in three months.
Manufacturing has slipped into a recession, analysts say, creating significant headwinds for Trump as he seeks a second term in the White House.
“It takes no insight to recognize that both Michigan and Wisconsin, which voted for President Trump and now are led by Democrats, are in a recession,” Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University, said. “Nobody is going to suggest those two places are going to be good for a reelection bid for him.”
Michigan lost 4,500 manufacturing jobs from September 2018 to September 2019, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while in Wisconsin, factory employment fell by 6,800 and in Pennsylvania, 8,600.
“I don’t see the U.S. economy slipping into recession,” Hicks said, “but I see states slipping into basically a state-level recession.”
Economists say the downturn in manufacturing can be attributed to the prolonged trade war with China, which has, for more than a year, resulted in tit-for-tat tariffs. Trade tensions, however, let up last month when Trump announced a phase one deal with Beijing.
As part of the agreement, China agreed to buy American farm products, while the U.S. called off a planned increase in tariffs on Chinese products set to take place Oct. 15.
“The trade war has done significant damage to manufacturing, agriculture, transportation — the industries that are on the front line, and they’re taking the brunt of the battle,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said.
A reduction in or elimination of tariffs imposed by the world’s two largest economies, however, could provide relief for the slumping manufacturing industry.
“Resolving the trade issues should lend certainty to the trade relations and bolster countries’ confidence in trade,” said Susan Houseman, vice president at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “Getting rid of uncertainty is definitely a good thing.”
Doubt remains whether or not the president will entirely erase the levies, which Zandi said is what would be needed to revive manufacturing. In addition to imposing tariffs on goods from China, the Trump administration has also slapped tariffs on a variety of specialty foods and beverages from the European Union. The president has also threatened to impose duties on all imports from Mexico, which would roil the U.S. auto industry, though backtracked on his threat to do so.
“In the last six months, it’s become patently obvious the trade war is doing this type of damage,” he said.
Even though key swing states suffer losses of factory jobs, Trump’s approval rating has remained consistent.
A poll of registered voters in Wisconsin from Marquette Law School put Trump’s approval rating at 46%, though the president received higher marks for the economy, with 51% approving of his handling.
But Wisconsin voters held a less optimistic outlook for the economy next year, with 25% saying it will improve and 30% believe the economy will worsen.
Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said the gloominess among Wisconsin voters could be related to the loss of factory jobs, but also pessimism that the long period of economic growth may be nearing an end.
“How public opinion changes about the economy, there is this anticipation, future expectations, but it’s also the case the economy needs to make some clear moves for a substantial bulk of the electorate to understand what’s going on and agree on what’s going on,” he said.
While Trump promised to breathe new life into U.S. manufacturing, Franklin said it’s up to his political opponents to remind voters of how he has fallen short on his campaign promises.
“I would be shocked if a Democratic campaign doesn’t use any shortfalls in the economy to point to problems with the Trump presidency, assuming those things hold up through next year, and the manufacturing trend stays with us for a while,” he said.
The state of the manufacturing industry and the economy as a whole come November 2020 will weigh heavily on whether Trump successfully wins reelection.
“If the manufacturing sector is in a full-scale recession come this time a year from now, maybe there will be some problems there,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “If this leads to some small segment of the Trump electorate not showing up or maybe even voting Democrat, that’s important and potentially decisive in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, which are manufacturing-heavy and which the president narrowly carried in 2016.”
Many voters today, he added, cast their ballots based on party loyalty and could be willing to give Trump a pass.
But Zandi noted that the key states who backed Trump in 2016 are the ones feeling the most pain from the manufacturing sector sliding into a recession, and that could prove harmful to the president when those voters head to the polls next year.
“The places that voted for the president are dependent on manufacturing and agriculture and fossil fuel energy, and those are parts of the economy that are in a recession in large part because of his policies and the trade war,” he said. “You would think people will connect the dots and say, ‘What’s going on? This doesn’t end up.’ Logic would dictate that people are getting hurt by these policies and would begin to decide to vote for somebody else.”
