Wealth & Poverty from Marketplace APM

Can Trump keep his big promises on steel jobs?


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During a presidential campaign, candidates make a lot of promises. History shows us the winners often have trouble keeping them. Many supporters of President-elect Donald Trump are looking to him to keep many of his campaign promises about bringing back manufacturing jobs, especially in industrial towns that have borne the brunt of job losses in recent years.In southwestern Illinois, the steel industry has been an anchor in the community for decades. The mill feels like a city unto itself, with mountains of raw materials and weathered buildings that stretch for blocks. Usually, the parking lots around the U.S. Steel facilities are full of cars, but weeds are peeking through the cracks in the asphalt in some of those lots now."It looks like a ghost town," said Dan Simmons, president of United Steelworkers local 1899. That’s because hundreds of steelworkers here have been laid off in recent years."Actually we have currently about 437 members working," said Simmons at the local union hall ahead of a meeting. "And for a brief time, those people weren't working and then you see tumbleweeds going through the plant."He was getting ready to deliver good news to his members, many of whom have been out of work for more than a year. The Illinois government had just agreed to extend unemployment benefits through the holidays.Trump's promise to renegotiate trade deals and bring back manufacturing jobs resonated in steel towns like Granite City.Michael Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, said because steel jobs tend to be concentrated in a few areas, "the impact that's felt by even a small disturbance in international trade is very heavy in those communities. But it goes almost unnoticed by the rest of the country."USW's Simmons said for every lost steel job in Granite City, seven other jobs are affected. That can mean the materials suppliers, the scrap yard, even the doughnut shop in a renovated gas station across fro...
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Wealth & Poverty from Marketplace APMBy American Public Media

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