November’s election saw a narrow but decisive victory for President Trump. Although the national popular vote was close, the geography of Trump voters appears as a sea of red across the heartland of America.
Here are 10 recommendations for Trump to help him meaningfully improve the economic prospects and daily lives of the heartland working-class families that put him in office.
- Keep domestic investments: Recent bipartisan legislation, including the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, constitute the largest investments in heartland regions in U.S. history. These programs give the United States a competitive edge in emerging industries and many new good-paying jobs for hard-pressed residents of heartland communities.
- Don’t throw the economic baby out with the governmental bath water. Trump moved quickly after his election to create the new Department of Government Efficiency. The streamlining of federal bureaucracy should, however, preserve officials responsible for administering the unprecedented funding pouring out to heartland communities. Trump should also keep existing federal entities responsible for economic data collection and statistics on state and local economies, maintaining the ability to gauge the impact of priorities like tariff and immigration policy.
- Keep illegal immigrants out — and let more legal immigrants in. Americans support getting control of illegal immigration, but legal immigration remains a driver of America’s competitive edge over economic rivals like China. Studies show that immigrants have led to U.S. employment and population growth for 50 years; they are particularly important to heartland regions, where they open new main-street businesses and repopulate dying communities.
- Don’t hand the global car industry over to China. During the campaign, Trump criticized then-President Biden’s support of electric vehicles. He also placed great faith in the judgement of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors. Musk, for one, realizes electric vehicles are the future of the industry. He may not want competitors to Tesla, but pulling the plug on incentives for these vehicles would hand the industry to China. China has monopolized the supply chain for them with its chokehold on component parts and batteries. Without help to compete fairly, Detroit, South Carolina and every other place that makes cars here will be doomed.
- Keep asking U.S. farmers to fix climate change. Trump and many of his appointees have maintained that global warming is a hoax. But farmers across America — among the president’s strongest supporters — know better. They deal with a warming climate every day: droughts and longer dry periods, catastrophic weather events, flooding that disrupts shipping to markets. Farmers aren’t ones to complain, but they are the world’s best problem-solvers. Under Biden administration policies, farmers are now creating ways to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane (50 percent of which comes from agriculture). And they’re making money doing it!
- We don’t trade, we make things together. Trump has promised lots of tariffs. Tariffs make sense when a country is trying to gain advantage — as China is doing with electric vehicles. But with our allies the U.S. doesn’t “trade” as much as make things together (like cars with Canada). Much so-called U.S. trade is in intermediate goods, referring to a component of a finished product. This co-production system is especially important to the Manufacturing Belt of the Midwest. Materials and parts for the average “made in America” automobile cross an international border more than seven times. Tariffs on this “trade” would just hurt U.S. consumers and manufacturers alike.
- Make education after high school free for every American. Trump won voters without a postsecondary education, who are frustrated about not being able to make economic ends meet. The new administration can do one thing to guarantee them economic security: help them get an education past high school. Jobs that pay decently today require it. Studies have found that 99 percent of all decent-paying jobs created since the Great Recession require some form of post-high school technical or higher education. There are models out there, like the Tennessee Reconnect program and Michigan’s Kalamazoo Promise and No Worker Left Behind programs. These programs show if you eliminate the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo in favor of the simple promise of paying for education that delivers a good-paying job, it works!
- Keep the blue wall happy. The so-called “Blue Wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — were decisive in November’s election. These are all Great Lakes States where polls show residents care most about protecting their mighty waters. Voters in the region support continued funding of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the multibillion-dollar clean-up of Great Lakes waters that has led to revitalization of industrial communities.
- Hook up rural America. High-speed internet access allows small businesses to operate from anywhere, and young people and adults to learn remotely. But much of rural America is still unplugged from full participation in today’s economy. Nearly one-quarter of rural residents lack access to fixed, high-speed broadband service. The Trump administration can deliver a better life for “red America” by accelerating the nation’s push to get everyone connected.
- Even America needs allies. Just as investing in our own people and production at home will make America stronger, America is stronger with partnerships with countries that share our values of freedom and fair play. If the U.S. pushes allies away, it will effectively push them right into the lap of China, which is very eager to help them build ports and manufacture computer chips, or anything else!
In ads that splashed across the TV screens of heartland residents last fall, Trump promised to fix an economy that was “broken” by the Biden-Harris administration. If his goal, now in office, is to meaningfully deliver on that promise to heartland voters who put him back in the White House, he’ll follow this advice.
John Austin is a senior fellow with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, and coordinator of the Heartlands Transformation Network.
