The Price of Nostalgia

It's time to accept Ohio's manufacturing heydays ain't coming back.

While campaigning for president in 2017, Donald Trump, a man who made a career of bamboozling Americans into thinking he had business acumen, appeared in the Mahoning Valley and told residents not to sell their houses since the heydays of American manufacturing were right around the corner.

That should have been the first clue things would soon go off the rails. Not two years later, the Lordstown Chevy Cruze factory, a facility so large its architects had to take the curvature of the earth into account when building it, shuttered its doors after 50 years in business and moved the Cruze manufacturing to Mexico despite receiving millions of dollars in tax credits to keep their factory in Ohio.

The results were cataclysmic for the workers, many of whom had only known the factory and its union wages and protections as the only job they’ve ever had. Two years later, many are still struggling despite takings jobs at other General Motors plants.

General Motors shuttering the plant was a massive black eye for Trump and Ohio’s Republican regime that worships at the altar of its one true God, Big Business.

Naturally, they did the only thing they know how to do: Throw more tax credits at a business willing to take over the plant. So when they found a replacement in an electric pick-up truck start-up called Lordstown Motors, they did the famous “Mission Accomplished” charade that we’ve all come to know and love from these reptiles.

Nevermind that even the best case scenario would be fewer jobs in the plant or that none of them would be unionized. But that never matters to a politician as long as they can bleat about “jobs jobs jobs jobs” to reporters who will write their words without any serious pushback.

One objectively hilarious thing about the Trump presidency was his handlers would bring big boy trucks to the White House whenever he got in a sour mood after reading a poll that had him losing to Joe Biden, the man he claimed had dementia and was kept in his basement.

Lordstown Motors got the royal welcome. Here’s what Trump said in September 2020:

“We’ve been working on this very long and very hard,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn, where he examined the vehicle with Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, Dayton Republican Rep. Mike Turner and Trump’s manufacturing policy chief, Peter Navarro. “This is a really unique thing because the four wheels are — hub motor, hub motor — this is the only one that does this in the world. It has a lot of advantages.

“The area was devastated when General Motors moved out,” Trump continued. “Beyond the plant, it’s incredible what’s happened in the area. It’s booming now. It’s absolutely booming. … It’s an incredible piece of science, technology. It’s going to happen now with more and more trucks. And ultimately they say you’ll be able to do it for less money, and it’s better, which is a good combination.”

The trouble with this statement starts with the first sentence. Trump only worked “very long and very hard” to enrich himself and his river monster children. So right away we know we’re dealing with his typical torrent of bullshit.

It’s a classic statement because Trump clearly only gleaned a the buzzword “hub motor” from the 30-second briefing he got while the truck was rolled onto the White House lawn.

He doesn’t give a shit about the people in the Mahoning Valley. He never did, and I honestly feel bad for the residents that got duped into thinking otherwise.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see the latest news involving Lordstown Motors.

From Ben Foldy and Micah Maidenberg of wsj.com:

Lordstown Motors Corp. RIDE -18.84%, one of the most ambitious electrical-vehicle startups, said its chief executive and top financial leader resigned after a new report from a board committee found inaccuracies in parts of the company’s disclosures on truck preorders.

The upheaval marks the latest setback not only for Lordstown Motors but for electric vehicle startups, which have captured the imaginations, and funds, of investors but in several cases have stumbled as newly public companies.

The prospect of capitalizing on a global shift toward electric cars has created a new generation of industry contenders. But Lordstown Motors and others have drawn scrutiny from short sellers and regulators over whether they can deliver on the plans they pitched to Wall Street.

Lordstown Motors, which plans to build electric pickup trucks at a former General Motors Co. assembly plant in Ohio, on Monday said Steve Burns, its CEO, and Julio Rodriguez, its finance chief, have stepped down from the company. Mr. Burns also stepped down from the company’s board, according to Lordstown Motors.

Ah! Hard to believe that Republican Senate candidate Mike Gibbons, an investment banker and top advisor to the Lordstown Motors deal, told reporters a mere four days ago that the notion Lordstown Motors didn’t have enough money to start production was “overblown.” If this is overblown then I’d hate to see what is properly blown, because it sure as Hell ain’t Gibbons.

I feel like I’ve seen this porno before and it always ends with Ohio getting fucked (and not in the good way either). Some corporate hobgoblins realize they can increase their pay and stock options by moving its unionized factory to countries with lax labor laws and an even sleepier labor movement than America.

Then politicians rush in with a bandaid and bandy about tax credits to some huckster that promises us the good days are coming back as the politicians shriek about jobs.

And then nothing ever happens and in a few years we forget about it entirely as the memory of a thriving community fades from collective memory. The Lordstown saga is just another chapter in that sad tale.

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