Public Citizen has organized a series of town halls in union halls across Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa to discuss the impacts of long-term trade policies on blue-collar workers ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The meetings, conducted in partnership with labor organizations including the United Auto Workers, focus on the economic pressures facing industrial communities as lawmakers attempt to regain the trust of voters who previously supported Republican presidential candidates.
Morgan Hughes, an auto worker with UAW Local 402 at a General Motors assembly plant in Springfield, Ohio, said tariffs and trade agreements have directly affected her facility. Orders at the plant have dropped significantly amid the current tariff environment, and recent ownership changes have introduced new uncertainty about long-term employment. “We already know that labor outside of the US is so much cheaper, so they’re building the same trucks much, much cheaper than we’re building them here,” Hughes said.
The workforce decline in Springfield mirrors broader regional trends. When her father began working at the facility in the 1990s, the plant employed more than 5,000 workers. Today, the facility employs approximately 1,300 workers, reflecting a multi-decade reduction in domestic manufacturing capacity.
Brenda Davis, a retiree who spent more than 20 years working at a Ford plant in Ohio, said foreign vehicle manufacturing remains a visible reminder of outsourcing risks. Foreign vehicles are strongly discouraged from parking lots at autoworkers’ facilities, as they serve as a reminder of the ongoing threat outsourcing poses to their livelihoods.
U.S. manufacturing jobs peaked at roughly 19.6 million in 1979, according to historical labor data. Following the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities shuttered across the industrial belt. The U.S. Department of Labor certified that over 950,000 jobs were lost directly due to NAFTA, though analysts consider that figure an undercount. Currently, the U.S. has approximately 12.6 million manufacturing jobs, with the Midwest historically accounting for about one-third of all U.S. manufacturing employment before shedding more than 1 million jobs between 1990 and 2019.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) addressed workers at a town hall in Dearborn, stating, “All of us know that Nafta-style trade deals have failed working families in the country as a whole,” Tlaib said. “What we saw was a global race to the bottom, in which the gap between the rich and the poor skyrocketed and working people got shafted.”
Current and retired workers described generational impacts from the industry’s contraction. Janice Williams, who worked at a Ford assembly plant in Ohio for 32 years before retiring in 2020, said offshoring disrupted the economic mobility her family had pursued for decades. “We’re looking out for our families. We want our families, our children, to have the same opportunity we have had over the years,” Williams said. She noted that the working class appears to be disappearing as political representation dwindles.
Gail Aleshire, who retired from a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, before it closed in 2019, emphasized the importance of preserving unionized, high-wage employment for future generations. She noted that her own retirement benefits allow her to travel and visit family, but expressed concern that younger workers may never secure similar security.
Union representatives argue that the political messaging around trade and employment needs to focus directly on worker concerns rather than partisan divisions. Meschelle Wilson, a Ford truck plant worker in Dearborn since 2014, said policy conversations often become bogged down by party alignment instead of addressing workplace issues. “Everybody seems to be one way or the other,” Wilson said. “When it comes to the labor movement, just stay there and make your points, and you’ll get those people as we come to you.”
David Green, director of Region 2B at the United Auto Workers and former local union president at the Lordstown plant, said he was skeptical from the start when Donald Trump promised manufacturing jobs would return to Ohio. At a 2017 rally in Youngstown, Trump told workers not to sell their houses as he promised a manufacturing revival. The Lordstown plant still closed in 2019 under the Trump administration, and Green said the community subsequently experienced further economic damage, including the closure of the local hospital where he was born.
“When Trump came in and he’s making all these promises, I was extremely leery, personally, because I had seen failed promises pretty much my whole life,” Green said. He noted that rhetoric promising to save jobs was ultimately disconnected from the plant closures and regional economic shifts that followed. Green’s local was also targeted publicly by Trump during his tenure as union president, but Green emphasized that the union’s political focus remains on electing candidates who support labor interests regardless of party.
“I don’t care if it’s a Democrat or Republican, I’m a trade unionist first,” Green said. “We need working people to fix working people’s problems. Billionaires and CEOs are good at fixing billionaire and CEO problems, but nobody can fix working people problems like working people.”
Political analyst Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Democrats face a constrained strategy ahead of November because they do not control the House or Senate. He cited recent polling showing an approval rating of 30% for Trump on the economy and suggested the Democratic focus must be on voter turnout strategy. “There’s nothing they can offer because they control nothing, so their number one job this November is to convince white, blue-collar workers and other Republican voters that they shouldn’t bother to vote for Trump and Trump’s party because he’s not producing for them,” Sabato said.
Marjorie Chambers, who retired from General Motors in 2022, said labor education and voter registration are essential to maintaining political influence for working-class communities. She referenced the legacy of former UAW president Walter Reuther to frame the connection between economic conditions and electoral participation. “Walter Reuther said there’s a direct relationship between the bread box and the ballot box. We need them to understand that direct relationship,” Chambers said.