In response to JD Vance’s rally in Middletown, Ohio, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“In case you needed any more proof that JD Vance puts Donald Trump and his ultra-wealthy backers over working families, just take a look at how willing he is to push Trump’s MAGAnomics agenda that left thousands of Ohioans in the dust. Vance’s trip to Ohio today is a glaring reminder of how Trump broke his promises to workers: presiding over the offshoring of jobs, factories shuttering, and thousands of Ohio workers losing their jobs — something he then said ‘doesn’t really matter.’ Now, the Trump-Vance ticket is doubling down on an extreme Project 2025 agenda that would put the ultra-rich first on the backs of the middle class.”

REMINDER: Donald Trump repeatedly broke his promises to workers in Ohio and across the country. Trump oversaw factory closures and manufacturing job losses, which he said “doesn’t really matter.”

Trump after GM moved to cut over 14,000 jobs, including at the Lordstown plant in Ohio: “It doesn’t really matter because Ohio is under my leadership.”

CNN: “Trump told GM workers he could save their plant, but it’s gone for good”

“As details emerged Thursday about the tentative United Auto Workers agreement with General Motors, one thing became clear: The shuttered GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that President Donald Trump hoped to save will stay closed for good.

“The President cast himself in 2016 as a savior for workers, taking the unusual tack of publicly pressuring corporations like Carrier into changing their plans for moving or changing production. But despite months of demands, Trump has been unable to get GM to keep jobs at Lordstown.

“Manufacturing activity in September [of 2019] fell to its lowest point in a decade. The Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which Trump flipped, have all lost manufacturing jobs since June. Many of those jobs have moved overseas.”

Associated Press: “Lordstown’s economy can hardly be described as booming.  Trump appeared on the South Lawn driveway with a Lordstown Motors Endurance pickup, touting its technology and boasting about the area’s comeback, which lost hundreds of jobs when GM closed the plant that made the Chevrolet Cruze compact car. Lordstown Motors bought the plant with financing help from GM.  

“But the unemployment rate in Trumbull County, where the village of about 3,000 people is located, was 11.4% in August, the third-highest in Ohio. It was 6.6% in March 2019, when GM closed the factory, and it rose to 6.8% in February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic took hold.”

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s trade war against China didn’t achieve the central objective of reversing a U.S. decline in manufacturing, economic data show, despite tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to discourage imports.”

Detroit Free Press: “Trump, tweets couldn’t save U.S. auto jobs in 2017”

MLive: “On the 2016 campaign trail in Warren, Trump pledged ‘you won’t lose one plant’ if he were elected. GM announced last year it would end production at five North American plants.”

New York Times: “After Years of Growth, Automakers Are Cutting U.S. Jobs”

Bloomberg: “The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch”

Washington Post: “Trump promised ‘America First’ would keep jobs here. But the tax plan might push them overseas.”

JD Vance backs Trump’s extreme and expensive Project 2025 agenda that includes giving handouts to the ultra-wealthy (again) at the expense of working Americans and risks supercharging inflation.

Vance: “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025]. There are some good ideas in there.”

Vance on Trump’s plan that would raise tariffs to kill the income tax for wealthiest Americans and raise costs for hardworking families: “This is a fascinating proposal and we could talk for a while about it.”

Trump: “You’re all people that have a lot of money … You’re rich as hell. … We’re gonna give you tax cuts.”

Vanity Fair: “Donald Trump Wants to Give His Favorite Corporations Another Giant Tax Cut in a Second Term: Report”

CBS News: “Two years after Trump tax cuts, middle-class Americans are falling behind”

The Guardian: “Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

Axios: “Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November.”

Project 2025: “The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent.”

The Atlantic: “Trump’s Plan to Supercharge Inflation”

Vance opposes legislation that protects unions, standing firmly against working people.

Politico: “Vance has consistently opposed the PRO Act, the ‘holy grail of pro-union labor reform’ that organized labor and its allies on the Hill have been fighting for over two years to get passed. … Vance’s skepticism of the PRO Act is part of a more fundamental skepticism that he harbors toward organized labor.”

Fast Company: “Vance also voted in favor of a resolution to strike down the NLRB’s updated joint-employer rule, which would have given workers more leverage when organizing at companies—like Amazon—that rely heavily on third-party contractors, by forcing both employers to participate in labor negotiations.”

Under Trump, the U.S. lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs – a fact that Trump’s team refused to admit is true.

Politico: “Asked for comment, a Trump spokesperson sent a long list of the former president’s economic accomplishments, saying his policies ‘created more than 1.2 million manufacturing and construction jobs’ and helped ‘bring back supply chains from overseas.’”

Bureau of Labor Statistics: When Trump left office, there were over 170,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when he started.

Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in American history – he has said unions are made up of “dues-sucking people” and that if he had his choice he would go without union labor.

Trump: “I know the unions. They’re dues-sucking people. They just want their dues and they couldn’t care less.”

New York Times: “Does [Trump] support unions? He has had ‘great success’ in New York building with unions and also in Florida without unions. ‘If I had my choice,’ he said, ‘I think I’d take it without.’”

Associated Press: “During Trump’s presidency, the National Labor Relations Board reversed several key rulings that made it easier for small unions to organize, strengthened the bargaining rights of franchise workers and provided protection against anti-union measures for employees.

“The Supreme Court’s conservative majority — including three justices that Trump nominated — overturned a decades-old pro-union decision in 2018 involving fees paid by government workers. The justices in 2021 rejected a California regulation giving unions access to farm property so they could organize workers.”

Trump spent four years abandoning workers, and his support from union households fell.

Bloomberg Law: “Biden won 57% of union households nationwide compared with 40% for Trump, according to Edison Research, which produces exit polling for major news organizations. That was double Hillary Clinton’s eight-point edge with union households in 2016.”

Axios: “Trump only lost union households by eight points (51%-43%) in 2016 … But Biden reclaimed those states in 2020 while winning union households by 16 points (56%-40%), according to exit polling.”