CLYDE, Ohio — Donald Trump was speaking directly to Ohioans during the 2016 election when he vowed to bolster the U.S. economy and reinvigorate domestic manufacturing in places where jobs had long since disappeared overseas.
But when he returns here Thursday it’s to a state confronting Great Recession-level unemployment, the loss of thousands of jobs at factories in the past year, and a still-raging health emergency that’s killed more than 3,500 Ohioans.
Still, Mr. Trump won’t see much of that when he tours Whirlpool’s successful appliance plant in northwest Ohio, a 2.4 million-square-foot facility that employs 3,000 people and can churn out 20,000 washing machines a day.
Sandusky County, where Whirlpool has employed generations of families, represents the political shift that occurred among white blue-collar voters in politically vital states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2016. President Obama carried Sandusky County with 49.8 percent of votes in 2012. Mr. Trump won 58.4 percent in 2016.
Besides touring the plant, Mr. Trump is slated to “deliver remarks on his administration’s successful efforts to revitalize and support America’s resurgent manufacturing industry,” the White House said.
After months of record-low unemployment and moderate growth in manufacturing, Mr. Trump’s visit will underscore the degree to which Ohio’s economy has been hammered in the first several months of the pandemic.
In Sandusky County, the June unemployment rate was 10 percent, mirroring the statewide unemployment rate during the Great Recession but still lower than Toledo and Lucas County during the same month.
“Pre-pandemic, it was steady as she goes. Post-pandemic, it’s about as good as can be expected,” said Jamie Karl, the managing director for communications with the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, a trade group that represents 1,500 businesses.
“If you go back to January of 2017, it was nice,” he said.
Ohio’s manufacturing sector more or less maintained that level through February, 2020, when the state registered just over 700,000 manufacturing jobs, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It quickly shed 100,000 of those jobs in April, when the bulk of the state’s coronavirus closures took effect. The same month, the state clocked 16.8 percent unemployment, nearly tripling in a month’s time and up from 4.1 percent in February.
“We had just a horrible April,” said George Zeller, an economic analyst from Cleveland. “And that’s where the real effect of the pandemic was seen.”
The state had regained 58,000 manufacturing jobs by June, but was still down 44,000 manufacturing jobs from June, 2019.
And even though U.S. manufacturers are busy fulfilling a backlog of orders accumulated during the pandemic, output hasn’t returned to pre-coronavirus levels, said Bill Adams, a senior economist for PNC Bank based in Toledo. The ripple effect has been felt across supply chains.
“The challenges of finding toilet paper a couple of months ago are analogous,” Mr. Adams said. “The same thing happened for manufacturers and their ability to get components from their suppliers.”
Analysts caution that several factors can influence Ohio’s prospects for an economic rebound in the coming months, including whether coronavirus outbreaks can be kept at bay at schools and factories.
Another factor is whether Congress extends the pandemic unemployment benefit that afforded jobless Americans an extra $600 per week from the federal government on top of the benefits that states pay out. The extra payment ended July 31 after lawmakers were unable to strike a new stimulus deal.
“We’re now seeing a fiscal cliff,” said Mike Shields, a researcher at Policy Matters Ohio, a left-leaning think tank. “That’s going to put the brakes on job growth, or potentially cause new job losses.”
Mr. Trump’s Ohio visit is one stop on a recent tour of battleground states where he’s making his economic pitch at factories that produce medical supplies and personal protective equipment for health-care workers on the front lines of treating coronavirus. In May, he visited a Ford Motor Co. plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., that shifted to making ventilators as the nation faced a potential nationwide shortage.
Whirlpool’s Clyde plant, a jewel of domestic manufacturing that’s regarded as the largest washing-machine factory in the world, fits easily into the narrative Mr. Trump has built around his economic policies, which center on restoring the image of American manufacturing and cracking down on international competitors for unfair trade practices.
The appliance giant, whose major foreign competitors include Samsung and LG, has long contended that it’s been harmed by the same forces that Mr. Trump rails against in trade.
Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, Democrat and Republican, have both testified in front of the U.S. International Trade Commission about how foreign manufacturers undercut Whirlpool by “dumping” products — flooding the domestic market with washing machines sold at unfairly low prices.
The ITC has ruled in Whirlpool’s favor on several anti-dumping cases. And when he came into office, Mr. Trump authorized broader trade actions to safeguard the corporation.
The President’s measures included a tariff on imported washing machines, the economic gain from which Whirlpool said allowed it to hire more than 200 workers in Clyde. But at the same time it drove up the cost of both washers and dryers for consumers.
Despite Mr. Trump’s action for Whirlpool, Mr. Brown, a union ally who often talks about the “dignity of work” and workers’ rights, said the president hasn’t done enough to broadly benefit workers.
“After Senator Portman and I pushed hard to get President Trump to do the right thing for Whirlpool workers, he has since proceeded to betray working families at every turn and champion policies that leave them behind,” Mr. Brown said, citing Mr. Trump’s tax policies and pandemic response.
Mr. Portman, the former U.S. trade representative, praised Mr. Trump for helping Whirlpool secure protections that “increased their investment in their workers and American production.”
First Published August 5, 2020, 1:00 p.m.
