The Forgotten NY
After all three Presidential debates, the single line that stuck with me was “Take a look at Upstate NY.” Trump was commenting about Hillary’s inability to bring back jobs as a NY Senator. And the voters agreed. Trump flipped 14 Obama-supporting counties to his side, gathering as much as 72% of the vote in counties surrounding Buffalo. The non-NYC part of the state not only feels betrayed by Hillary, but also clings to Trump’s message of bringing home manufacturing jobs (but trust me, no one thinks Trump is more of an irresponsible idiot and slimeball more than I do…).
I grew up in Western NY, a collection of small cities (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse) and quiet villages (unskilled pictures below) tied to the Midwest by the Great Lakes. In the nineteenth century, the Erie Canal became a prominent shipping route, transporting goods from the Midwest straight across New York State to the east coast cities. The steady business along the Erie Canal gave rise to port-villages as sincerely named as Middleport, which (you guessed it) happens to be just about in the middle of Lockport and Brockport (which are an hour drive apart, but much longer on a horse-drawn boat). Today, with the Canal’s modern day obsolescence, a strip of corroding economies runs across the middle of New York.
After the Erie Canal itself became obsolete, Western NY watched its manufacturing jobs go overseas. When I was a kid, the half-mile long ex-Fisher-Price factory at the end of my street sat mostly vacant, while the Power Wheels toys I played with all said “Made in China.” My classmates’ parents took early retirements when auto-related manufacturers financially restructured and laid off employees who had worked there their entire lives. So when Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin voted in a President who campaigned feverishly about bringing middle class manufacturing jobs back into the country, I was one of the least surprised people in California.
The Rust Belt’s economy has been under constant pressure, and gets an extra kick down with each economic downturn. The auto-industry already faced foreign competition, powerful workers’ unions, and soaring fuel prices, only to be hit with the financial collapse of 2008 that dried up consumer lending and bankrupted pension plans. Places like Detroit and Flint became national symbols of poverty. Closer to home was Delphi Automotive, a $17bn electrical components manufacturer spin-out from General Motors. It was one of the largest employers in the region, with multiple factories within commuting distance from me. They first cut 11,500 jobs in 2001, then filed bankruptcy in 2005 when agreements could not be reached over union wages. They closed 45 plants over the next two years.
While the area’s economy has been on a gradual downward slope since America’s industrial era, the late 20th century saw Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh lose 45% of their population. Michigan and Indiana continue to see their populations fall significantly, both as job-seekers move out and death rates continue. Most people in the rest of the country understand that manufacturing jobs have been offshored, but don’t realize that this wasn’t a concise transition, and that the exporting of manufacturing jobs is something that still cripples Rust Belt towns each year (for evidence, consider the 1,000 jobs that Trump ‘saved’ at Carrier in Indiana after his Presidential election). It’s a slow economic death for an area that hasn’t found its next industry wave. And, being in Silicon Valley, I already see the Tesla dealerships, robots, and self-driving cars that could be the final straw on the Rust Belt.
What can revive the Rust Belt’s economy? That article is coming up.
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Further reading & stats on job loss stats:
