“Across Poplar Bluff, a struggling town of 17,000 in a remote pocket of southeast Missouri, many residents are reluctant to criticize Trump as they grapple with the prospect that their community could be one of the trade war’s first casualties,” reports Jenny Jarvie for the Los Angeles Times.
The second largest employer in this small Missouri city, Mid Continent Nail Corporation, which employs more than 500 residents, laid off 60 assembly line workers last month – a direct result of a 25% tariff on steel imports from Mexico imposed by the Trump administration.
Residents have been rattled by this turn of events, but not enough to shake their support for Trump.
A machine programmer – and Trump supporter – at the factory says, “I support him 100%. In fact, I’d like to shake his hand. He’s doing a great job.”
A 12-year employee at Mid Continent, who still supports Trump, says, “Most workers are behind Trump, no matter what.”
The president of the local chamber of commerce said, in declining to comment about the president or his trade policies, “You won’t get a lot of people speaking around here.”
While folks fear losing their jobs and perhaps their homes, they continue to credit Trump with looking at “the big picture” and doing the right thing about trade.
At a time when Trump commands the loyalty of 90% of Republicans, this is just another data point. Although his overall approval remains historically low relative to recent presidents, at the 500-day mark, Trump’s “own party” job approval rating trailed only one president – George W. Bush, following 9/11 – in Gallup polling since World War II.
Link (and larger graph): Trump’s 500-day coup of the GOP, Conservatism – Jonathan Swan, Axios
In Butler County in November 2016, Trump received 79.2% of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 17.6%. A key to Trump’s victory were a handful of campaign promises he made that conflicted with conventional conservative views (and the well-established positions of the Republican Party and its donor class). In most instances, he caved once in office – and followed Republican orthodoxy – but he hasn’t done that with free trade and U.S. manufacturing jobs. And voters in Poplar Bluff credit him for that.
Missouri is a red state. In Butler County, more than 92% of residents are white. Fewer than 12% have college degrees. The median household income is $36,302. So, voter preferences are not surprising. But in 2012, Barack Obama received a higher level of support (25.8%) in Butler County against Mitt Romney (72.5%), than did Clinton against Trump. The Democratic ticket lost 1,327 voters in 2016 compared to 4 years earlier.
It’s likely that virtually no Trump voters in Poplar Bluff could list a single Clinton pledge directly related to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs or the economic anxieties felt in small cities and towns across the Midwest. In contrast, they remember that it was Bill Clinton who gave us NAFTA.
And virtually all remember Hillary Clinton’s statement during the campaign that half of Trump supporters were a “basket of deplorables.”
(Photo from Google Maps.)