Nearly 1,400 people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in Springfield, Ohio, on Wednesday. Those layoffs were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area.
On Saturday, Big Daddy Trump has a rally scheduled at a nearby high school where he will undoubtedly bloviate about his perceived great economy as a savior of the American auto industry, as he recently did in Texas.
“All over the country, they’re building factories, plants — manufacturing’s coming back,” Trump said on Thursday at a truck plant in Texas. “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations.”
Former Navistar worker Kyle Bos, 30, a three-time Trump voter, now plans to spend his newly found free time canvassing for Democrats in the five weeks ahead of the midterm elections.
“Something has to change politically in this country,” said Kyle Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”
Bos said he finds Trump’s promise of a $5,000 check if Republicans win the House and the Senate deeply offensive.
“It feels like a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we’re all ignorant,” Bos said.
The White House claims tariffs and tax cuts have helped the industry, but there was no proof in the pudding at Navistar.
His broad tariffs failed to boost demand and the plant’s former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility.
And the Big Ugly Bill’s provision to strip taxes from overtime was also no help when there was no overtime.
“We weren’t getting a lot of overtime because of the economy,” said Marianne Donnelly, who drove a forklift at the factory. “There just wasn’t any to be had, very little to be had.”
Overtime was down, but costs were up.
Donnelly said she buys marked-down beef, pork and chicken and stows them in her freezer. She canceled her subscriptions to The Columbus Dispatch and The Washington Post newspapers, along with some streaming services.
On the Monday before the layoffs, Morgan Hughes and JoJo Burkhard were knocking on doors in Kettering, a Dayton suburb named after the inventor of the electric car starter. They were trying to convince union members and retirees to vote for Democrats.
Hughes, 35, was able to buy a house at 21, but has been moonlighting for DoorDash and got a real estate license when her hours were cut.
Hughes said that what union members and retirees want is to be heard after feeling ignored by politicians. Burkhard said inflation and the economy have made it easier to swing voters to their side.
“It isn’t a hard pitch at all,” she said. “And even if they don’t want to stay Democratic long-term, they’ll at least give the candidates a chance this election, which could be a turning point for us.”