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美製造業衰落是中國的錯？美國工人否認

(2022-09-29 18:52:38) 下一個

美國製造業衰落是中國的錯？鐵鏽區失業工人並不這麽看

鳳凰大參考; 2022年09月29日 17:47:34 來自北京市

 

編者按：9月15日，紐約客刊發特稿《中國，和美國製造業逝去的輝煌傳說》。文章深度反思了美國製造業的衰落，認為美國的經濟民族主義在俄亥俄州（鐵鏽帶）表現得淋漓盡致。美國政客將居高不下的失業率歸咎於中國，然而，很多失業工人認為，把中國作為替罪羊而不是讓美國企業承擔責任的言論是“危險和不可接受的”。俄亥俄州一位工人表示，她並不怨恨中國，“中國工人可能也隻是在努力謀生。”造成美國大批製造業工人失業的根本原因是什麽？美國兩黨將中國塑造成經濟和意識形態上的敵人，究竟是否有助於失業問題的解決？在美國製造業榮光不再、產業工人普遍失望的當下，《鳳凰大參考》節選編譯文章，以供諸君思考。

作者 | E.塔米·金（E.TammyKim）韓裔美國作家，《紐約客》特約撰稿人，報道領域包括勞工和工作場所、藝術和文化、韓國等

來源丨THE NEW YORKER

原標題 | CHINA AND THE LORE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

美國幾十年來的政策錯誤使其未來的生產線被迫轉向中國

在俄亥俄州的參議院競選中，兩位候選人都在大放反亞裔言論，而忽略了讓企業承擔責任。

通用照明有限公司（G.E. Lighting）發出了裁員通知：自 2022 年 9 月 30 日左右起，在比塞勒斯市和洛根縣以南的這兩家工廠將永久倒閉，職位將永久取消，209 人由此失業。盡管當地工會已盡最大努力，家用燈泡的生產線仍將轉移到中國。兩年前收購通用照明的馬薩諸塞州公司 Savant Systems 將這樣的結果歸咎於銷售額下降。俄亥俄州資深參議員謝羅德·布朗 (Sherrod Brown) 以其為工人階級發聲、關注群眾切身利益的民主黨政治風格而聞名，他稱“幾十年來錯誤的稅收和貿易政策”將“未來的產品拱手讓給了中國”。

將製造業帶回鏽帶區的承諾，

變成了與中國的對賭

裁員通知發出一周後，我在比塞勒斯工廠的停車場與六名工會的領導人見麵。比塞勒斯很小，隻有1.1萬人口，這裏舉辦的德國臘腸節是從曾經擠滿該市鑄造廠的德國移民那裏繼承下來的。帕特裏夏·霍斯利（Patricia Horsley）剛下完夜班，她的工作是為熒光燈管塗白色塗層。她說： “本周是工廠建廠八十周年紀念日。”她說這句話時帶有幾分苦澀。該工廠已經漸漸丟掉了生產 A19 LED 燈泡的合同，沃爾瑪曾采購這種燈泡，以此支持“美國製造”商品。現在，這些燈泡的生產線也轉移到了中國，從而導致 81 名員工失業。與霍斯利擔任相同職位的梅麗莎·馬丁（Melissa Martin）告訴我：“我認為這是大多數製造業崗位的去向。如果它們能留在美國，我可能會感覺會好些。”

俄亥俄州近年的工業發展進程在很大程度上偏了軌。各類工廠不僅流到了中國，還流到了的美國南部的“工作權利州“ （編者注：美國有22個州被稱作“工作權利州”（Right to Workstates），原因是這些州分別通過了所謂“工作權利法案”。這類法案規定，加入工會不能作為雇用的先決條件，這是非常有利於雇主壓低工資和福利的法律，意味著雇主可以優先選擇沒有加入工會的工人，不需要擔心工人代表工會與其談判勞動報酬等工人待遇問題） 。 北美自由貿易協定（NAFTA）仍然不得民心。各級政府官員都拚命去保住製造業崗位，主要做法還是向企業提供補貼。造成的一種結果就是業務向海外流失，譬如幾年前，中國玻璃製造商福耀接管了位於俄亥俄州Moraine地區的通用汽車工廠的一處舊址。台灣電子巨頭台積電和富士康，韓國的 SK 海力士半導體公司和三星，都利用了美國由納稅人買單的製造業激勵政策，在德克薩斯州以及中西部和西南地區建立據點。

盡管目前從事醫療保健、教育和零售業工作的俄亥俄州人是製造業的兩倍，但工廠勞動力仍然是鏽帶區（傳統工業衰退的地區）的香餑餑。自19世紀90年代以來，似乎每一位政治家都承諾將製造業帶回該地區，或者至少停止衰退，再現一段輝煌時期。隨著時間的推移，這個承諾變了味，成了與中國的對賭。奧巴馬總統試圖推出一份明確將中國排除在外的跨太平洋貿易協定。特朗普總統把抨擊中國變成一項運動，他征收關稅，抹黑華裔美國科學家，借新冠病毒汙名化中國。（還記得他將新冠病毒稱為“功夫流感”嗎？）拜登總統在今年8月初簽署了規模達 2800 億美元的《芯片和科學法案》（The CHIPS and Science Act），旨在重振美國高科技製造業，從而與中國抗衡。

▎ 今年5月，美國總統拜登在考察美國俄亥俄州漢密爾頓當地企業時，就啟動旨在推動美國3D打印及製造業發展的“ AM Forward計劃”和《兩黨創新法案》發表公開講話。拜登在講話中指出，新冠疫情大流行以及俄烏衝突加劇了供應鏈危機。過於依賴海外供應致使美國經濟無法對抗通脹問題，而3D打印技術的發展則為美國製造提供了扭轉局麵的可能性

美國的經濟民族主義在俄亥俄州體現得淋漓盡致。幾個月前，正在競選美國參議院的民主黨國會議員蒂姆·瑞安（Tim Ryan）在中期競選中發布了一則廣告，將失業和俄亥俄州工人階級的普遍遭遇甩鍋中國。瑞安在許多競選活動中都在重複這一論調。他試圖阻止比塞勒斯的燈泡工廠關閉，但沒有成功。不過他成功說服了英特爾在哥倫布市郊外建起一座價值 200 億美元的先進半導體工廠，並讚成根據“芯片法案”讓英特爾獲得數十億美元的資金。瑞恩在參議院競選中的共和黨對手J·D·萬斯（J. D. Vance）同樣批評中國並支持英特爾。預計俄亥俄州正產生成千上萬的高科技製造業工作崗位，但相比該州560 萬工人的體量，不過是九牛一毛。

▎在俄亥俄州參議員競選中，民主黨人蒂姆·瑞安發布了一則競選廣告，將該州的失業和中產階級的衰落甩鍋中國。圖源：Getty

將中國塑造成經濟和意識形態上的敵人，是兩黨罕見的共識。 但美國一邊在痛斥中國和其他東亞國家支持私營企業和違反勞工標準，一邊卻在推行類似的戰略。美國的政策製定者急於增強國內供應鏈能力，此時往往高估了工廠崗位的質量及雇主的善意，而忽視了經濟的其他部分。他們的言辭帶有恐華色彩，可能會因此疏遠某些選民，或者造成更壞的後果。俄亥俄州的亞裔美國人譴責了瑞安的涉華廣告，指出自新冠疫情開始以來，他們遭受了一波騷擾和攻擊行為。瑞安告訴我：“當然，我不支持任何暴力。但我們也必須討論中國試圖做的事情……我們需要亞裔美國人的幫助和參與，以確保中國不會取代美國。”

▎共和黨人J·D·萬斯和他競選俄亥俄州參議院空缺席位的民主黨對手一樣，認為美國製造商輸給了中國，這並不公平。圖源： Getty

比起承擔責任，美國企業更偏向甩鍋給亞洲

有一晚，瑞安來到俄亥俄州的中南部小城蘭開斯特的市政廳，與還沒拿定主意的選民見麵（他還遲到了）。共有四十來個人到場，絕大多數都是美國退休人員協會的成員。瑞安在開場演講中強調就業和經濟發展，並懇請各黨派團結一致，而這種團結因為中國而得以實現。他說：“我希望這場競選能讓我們認識到，最樂於看到我們相爭的是中國。”

活動結束後，他遭到俄亥俄州亞裔美國人團體的抨擊，他們稱他對中國的言論是“危險和不可接受的”，指責他甩鍋給亞洲國家和亞洲人民，而沒有讓企業承擔責任。 我問他對此事的回應，是否擔心他的言論會激起公眾對亞裔移民的情緒。 他回答： “我當然希望不會。 如果你是美國人，來到這裏，你就是團隊的一份子，團隊裏也有很多成員是亞裔美國人。 ”

幾天後，我拜訪了代頓（俄亥俄州西南部城市）的Noppadol和Kanokwan Mangmeesub夫婦，他們都是從泰國移民過來的。去年1月，有人在賴特·帕特森空軍基地附近的越南和泰國餐廳Xuân的外牆上噴上了“去你媽的中國病毒”。幾周後，有人放火燒了屋頂，但沒有人因此被捕。諾帕多夫婦告訴我，自疫情開始以來，他們並沒有太關注中國、韓國、泰國和菲律賓裔美國人被毆打甚至殺害的報道。諾帕多曾心想：不敢相信我自己是受害者。亞洲人這麽多，為什麽這種事偏偏會發生在我身上?

縱火案發生後，這對夫婦關閉了他們的餐廳，去尋找新址。最終，他們在代頓市中心的第二街市場開了一家泰式小酒館。我去吃午餐時，看到酒館裏生意還不錯。Kanokwan告訴我他們現在更忙了。Noppadol在準備雞湯的間隙坐下來聊了一會兒。他們已經基本上從去年的事件中恢複過來，並打算再開一家餐廳。Noppadol不想把破壞和縱火與特朗普聯係在一起，“但這件事因他而起，”他說。

J. D. 萬斯也會定期發表抨擊中國的長篇大論，但相比於特朗普，他的論調跟瑞安的更像。凡斯在贏得共和黨初選後問道：“我們是要把就業機會轉移到中國，還是說為了美國工人和美國人民，把就業機會留在美國？”而瑞安在最近的競選廣告中說：“我們什麽時候才有勇氣創造公平的競爭環境，有勇氣去挑戰中國，有勇氣去做正確的事，讓我們的子孫後代在美國茁壯成長？”

即使崗位增加，地下崗工人也難以謀生

俄亥俄州有許多中小型工廠，累計雇用了數萬名工人。但是，隻有像英特爾在新奧爾巴尼的芯片工廠這樣的大型項目，才能吸引政客們的持續興趣，並吸引相應的稅收減免和其他公共補貼。我穿上熒光背心，戴上安全帽，和英特爾副總裁吉姆•埃弗斯（Jim Evers）一起去了公司的施工現場。時值8月，一隊黃色的推土機正在鏟平綿延至天邊的玉米和大豆田。一個月後，拜登在工廠奠基儀式上站在同一個地方，宣布“工業中西部回來了”。

埃弗斯告訴我，這將是美國40年來從零開始建造的第一家晶圓廠，即半導體製造工廠，將於2025年開業，與亞利桑那州（可能還有德國）的其他晶圓廠幾乎同時開業。 他說，英特爾的擴張對於“平衡供應鏈”和將半導體從東亞“帶回美國”至關重要。 在90年代，美國芯片占據近40%的全球市場，如今這一比例降到12%。 然而，單純靠美國國內供應鏈是不可能的。 英特爾需要從日本采購關鍵的芯片製造材料光阻劑，從荷蘭采購價值數億美元的光刻機，在中國、馬來西亞、越南和哥斯達黎加組裝、測試和包裝它的成品微芯片。

英特爾和俄亥俄州政府表示，該項目將創造7000個建築崗位和3000個製造技術人員和工程師的正式職位。據報道，員工的平均年薪將達到13.5萬美元，包含工資和股票期權。不過，在英特爾位於亞利桑那州和俄勒岡州的工廠，初級技術人員的起薪僅為6萬美元，每天工作12個小時（英特爾不願證實具體薪酬或福利待遇）。考慮到工廠的位置和一些技能要求高的崗位，英特爾可能會從俄亥俄州立大學（Ohio State University）招募畢業生。

俄亥俄州共撥款20多億美元給英特爾和富裕的新奧爾巴尼郊區，作為對“芯片法案”批準的數十億美元聯邦補貼的補充。蒂姆·瑞安和謝羅德·布朗稱讚該項目創造了“很好的工會崗位”，但我在現場看到的挖掘工人並不屬於建築工會，而且英特爾也不同意在工廠未來的組織運動中保持中立。在我們參觀工地的過程中，埃弗斯隻提到公司將遵守人權原則，並重視雇用俄亥俄州人、婦女、退伍軍人和非裔美國人。

在拜登簽署“芯片法案”之前，無黨派聯邦參議員伯尼·桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）認為，任何根據該法案獲得補貼的公司都應該同意將所有工作崗位留在美國，投資運營，而不是為了股東的利益回購股票，並尊重員工成立工會和集體談判的權利。 英特爾發言人麗莎·馬洛伊（Lisa Malloy）表示，該公司計劃在未來三年在國內半導體製造領域投入400多億美元，並稱公司與建築工會有過合作的曆史。

▎美國參議院於當地時間7月27日批準了一項2800億美元的法案，旨在促進美國科學研究和芯片（半導體）行業，以提振美國實力

在英特爾承諾給俄亥俄州提供的工作崗位中，有多少是可能會由從通用電氣在比塞勒斯和洛根的照明工廠等地下崗的工人填補？一份製造燈泡的工作，並不會讓工人具備檢查微觀芯片的技能。再培訓需要時間、財力和心力，並不是每個人都能為了新的職業而背井離鄉。比塞勒斯的燈泡工人在收到最後的解雇通知之前，設法通過工會協商出了一筆還過得去的遣散費：工齡每滿一年對應兩周的工資補償，外加六個月的醫療保險補償。但我在8月份遇到的工人至今都還沒有找到新工作。巴布•巴索爾（Barb Basore）的大家庭自1941年以來為通用電氣工作奉獻了多少年的青春，但他本人對進入製造業感到悲觀。

▎ 蓬勃發展的美國經濟在俄亥俄州東北部創造了新的製造業就業機會，但這些新的工作機會所付的工資大約隻有從前工會會員工資的一半。2017年，時任美國總統的特朗普曾承諾工廠工作“都會回來”。而部分美國下崗工人表示，這不過是空洞的承諾

霍斯利（Horsley）是上夜班的塗布工，她告訴我，她正在考慮回到學校學美發，這是一個基本不受全球化影響的職業。她是一名共和黨人，但打算在參議院競選中投票給瑞安，因為他努力拯救過他們的燈泡工廠。我問她對於被中國搶走工作有何感想。她並不怨恨中國工人，她說：“他們可能也不過是想謀生。”她補充說，她和家人都沒有權利評判中國人。起碼她個人不能這麽做，因為她丈夫在俄亥俄州中部的一家注塑機製造廠工作。雖說該公司的北美分部總部設在該州，但其公司總部卻遠在中國廣東省。

 

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Illustration of abandoned factories with huge workers fading into the background

Illustration by Anson Chan

Attachment A to the letter, citing the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or warn Act, was flinty and straight to the point. There were two columns: one listing job classifications, the other, the number of “impacted employees.” At the G.E. Lighting factory in the city of Bucyrus, in northern Ohio, the positions included unit attendants, machinists, and a group called Q.P.A.s. At the facility in Logan, about a hundred miles to the south, there were plant team leaders, a warehouse lead, and a furnace manager, among others. “Positions will be permanently eliminated beginning on or about September 30, 2022,” the letter read. The factories would close for good, and two hundred and nine people would lose their jobs. As a result, residential light bulbs will no longer be made in the United States: production will move to China, despite the best efforts of local unions. Savant, a Massachusetts company that bought G.E. Lighting two years ago, blamed a drop in sales. Ohio’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown, who’s known for his working-class, bread-and-butter style of Democratic politics, blamed “decades of misguided tax and trade policies” that ceded “the products of the future to China.”

A week after the layoff notice went out, I met with six workers, all leaders of their union, in the parking lot of the red-brick factory in Bucyrus. The central furnace was making its constant music, and a morning rain had interrupted a stretch of ninety-degree days. Bucyrus is small, about eleven thousand people, and hosts a bratwurst festival inherited from the German immigrants who once filled its foundries. Patricia Horsley, who was just off her overnight shift putting a white coating on fluorescent tubes, wore a pink headband over her hair and savored a cigarette. “This week, we’re having our eightieth anniversary,” she said, with some bitterness. Already, the plant had shrunk and lost a contract to produce A19 L.E.D. bulbs, which Walmart had sold as part of a “Made in America” initiative. The production of those light bulbs, too, had gone to China, putting eighty-one employees out of work. “I think that’s where most of the manufacturing jobs are going,” Melissa Martin, who has the same position as Horsley, told me. “I would probably feel better if they would be staying in the United States.”

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Ohio’s recent industrial history is largely one of departure. Factories of all kinds have been lost not only to China but to the right-to-work South. “nafta” is still a bad word. Government officials at all levels have tried desperately to keep manufacturing jobs in place, mostly by awarding subsidies to firms. One result has been an uncomfortable kind of onshoring, such as when the Chinese glassmaker Fuyao took over part of a shuttered General Motors facility in Moraine, Ohio—as depicted in the 2019 documentary “American Factory.” The Taiwanese electronics giants T.S.M.C. and Foxconn, and South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung have cashed in on taxpayer-funded manufacturing incentives to establish footholds in Texas, the Midwest, and the Southwest.

Though twice as many Ohioans work in health care, education, and retail than in manufacturing, factory labor persists as a Rust Belt obsession. Seemingly every politician since the nineteen-seventies has promised to bring back manufacturing to the region, or at least stop the bleed, and restore some period of glory. The particular spin of this vow has changed over time, and, right now, it’s structured as a wager against China: freedom versus Communism; manufacture here or die. President Barack Obama attempted to form a trans-Pacific trade pact that pointedly excluded Beijing. President Donald Trump made China-bashing something of a sport, imposing tariffs, scapegoating Chinese American scientists, and racializing covid-19. (Remember “kung flu”?) And President Biden promoted the two-hundred-and-eighty-billion-dollar chips and Science Act, a bill he signed in early August to revive high-tech manufacturing in the U.S., as a way to beat back the Chinese.

America’s economic nationalism du jour is clearly on display in Ohio. A few months ago, Tim Ryan, a Democratic congressman who’s now running for the U.S. Senate—in one of the closest and most closely watched midterm races—released a campaign ad titled “One Word.” The ad blamed “China,” or “Communist China,” for job losses and the general misfortune of Ohio’s working class, a theme Ryan has repeated at many campaign appearances. He tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the closure of the light-bulb factory in Bucyrus. He tried, and succeeded, in persuading Intel to break ground on a twenty-billion-dollar advanced-semiconductor plant outside Columbus—and voted to give the company access to several billion dollars under the chips Act to do so. Ryan’s Republican opponent in the Senate race, J. D. Vance, an acolyte of Trump and Peter Thiel, has been similarly critical of China and supportive of Intel. Thousands of high-tech manufacturing jobs are supposedly on their way to Ohio, but they will make up a tiny fraction of those held by the state’s 5.6 million workers.

 
In the Ohio Senate race, Democrat Tim Ryan released a campaign ad blaming “Communist China” for job losses and the decline of the state’s middle class.Photograph by Drew Angerer / Getty 

The casting of China as an economic and ideological foe is a rare area of bipartisan consensus. But even as the U.S. lambastes China and other East Asian nations for propping up private industry and violating labor standards, American policymakers are pursuing a similar strategy. In their haste to strengthen the domestic supply chain, they tend to overestimate the quality of factory jobs (and the good will of factory owners), while neglecting other parts of the economy. And the Sinophobic tint of their rhetoric risks alienating certain constituents—or far worse. When Ryan launched his China ad, Asian Americans in Ohio condemned it, citing a wave of harassment and assaults since the start of the pandemic. “Of course, I’m not for any violence,” Ryan told me. “But we also have to have a conversation about what China’s trying to do. . . . We need Asian Americans to help us and participate in making sure that a Communist government like China does not displace the United States.”

This election year, Ohio is reprising its role as litmus test, or harbinger, of a divided nation. Ohio went twice for Obama, and then twice for Trump: a formerly purple state that has reddened on account of deindustrialization. It’s also a state with an irreversibly globalized supply chain and a long record of international trade that nonetheless harbors profound misgivings about globalization. In central and northeast Ohio last month, I met with frustrated workers in a range of industries, and with politicians fixated on a bygone economy. Fifteen per cent of the state’s workforce is employed in manufacturing, compared with thirty-two per cent in education, health care, wholesale trade, transportation, and utilities. The largest private employer is Walmart; the second-largest is the Cleveland Clinic hospital system. Yet factory lore dominates the Ohio psyche: the monument to rubber workers in downtown Akron, the steel museum in Youngstown.

In Ohio and elsewhere, the nostalgia for manufacturing is based on a mid-century moment when work was plentiful, reasonably safe, and high paying; unions could check corporate power; and America made what the world needed and desired. This was arguably true between the forties and about 1970, after mass strikes prompted the creation of a New Deal regulatory state and before the fissuring caused by neoliberal globalization. Today’s factory jobs are less likely to come with security and benefits; they pay fifteen dollars an hour, not thirty-five.

Shane Divine, a thirty-four-year-old Ohioan, has worked for a medical-tubing manufacturer for the past seven years. On a recent Sunday, I met him outside his factory, near Kent State University, which smelled of warm rubber. He was just off a twelve-hour shift, and his T-shirt was dotted with globs of gunk. Divine operates the brominator, a machine that smooths out latex by running it through a chemical solution. Like many Ohioans, he comes from a family of makers: his dad was a union electrician; his grandparents were rubber workers for Goodyear and Goodrich. Unlike most Ohioans his age, he has a United Steelworkers union card and a fixed-benefit pension.

 

That night, I had dinner with Divine and his husband, Phyl, a tax lawyer, in their boxy, gray house in Stow, a suburb of Akron. Both are active in the local Democratic Party and had just voted in Ohio’s second primary of the year, which drew less than eight per cent of registered voters. The couple despaired of how their party, and liberals in general, have handled, or failed to handle, the state’s economy since deindustrialization. “Low-income jobs are everywhere—and old infrastructure,” Divine told me. “The jobs we lost are being replaced by low-wage jobs forty years after the plants closed.”

Youngstown, an hour east of the Divine residence, near Tim Ryan’s birthplace of Niles, is a national avatar for stunted post-manufacturing development. When the steel mills closed, in the seventies and eighties, a General Motors plant in nearby Lordstown became the area’s largest industrial employer. Thousands of people worked for G.M. until it, too, shut down, in the spring of 2019. A few months later, the company announced plans to bring new and advanced manufacturing to northeast Ohio—in electric vehicles and batteries—with the help of East Asian investors. Not far from the former G.M. site, Ultium, a joint venture between G.M. and LG, the South Korean conglomerate, built a battery plant more than four times the size of Ohio Stadium (incentivized by public grants and fifteen years’ worth of tax abatements). An Ultium spokesperson told me that production began in August, with some eight hundred employees paid between fifteen and twenty-two dollars per hour—about the same as an Amazon warehouse worker.

The old G.M. factory, meanwhile, has had an ironic epilogue. In 2020, G.M. sold it for twenty million dollars to Lordstown Motors, a local startup dedicated to making an electric pickup truck called the Endurance. Then, this past May, Foxconn bought the same plant for two hundred and thirty million dollars. On a recent morning, a creased banner reading “Foxconn” was wrapped around the tall metal sign in the parking lot of the former G.M. factory, which was entirely empty. Mine was the lone car on Ellsworth Bailey Road, the four-lane street leading into the plant; the only traffic was going to and from a HomeGoods warehouse and an Amazon delivery station. Foxconn has said that it will use the enormous facility to build the Endurance as well as electric tractors and the pear, a vehicle for “young urban innovators.” None of this manufacturing has yet begun, though a representative of Foxconn assured me that it will very soon. For historical reasons, the company has many skeptics. It is notorious for its factories in mainland China, where workers who assemble iPhones have died by suicide. The company also failed to follow through with a multibillion-dollar project to make LCD screens in Racine, Wisconsin.

However speculative northeast Ohio’s high-tech renewal may be, the area has another recent economic driver: multiple prisons. As I drove through a Lordstown neighborhood of weathered homes and crumbling concrete, the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary announced itself with a pitch-dark, freshly tarred road and a wide, deep-green lawn. Razor wire enveloped the facility like a mesh tent. Statewide, nearly twenty thousand people are employed in what the journalist Eyal Press has termed (morally) “dirty work”: the housing, feeding, punishment, and treatment of Ohio’s roughly forty-eight thousand incarcerated people. In the town of Girard, I visited Alice and Staughton Lynd, a married couple who spent decades representing steelworkers and writing books on the labor movement, such as “Rank and File.” When it became clear that the mills weren’t coming back, they turned to litigating cases on behalf of local prisoners. “We are hanging on doggedly in this area”—both are ninety-two years old—“because we want to wait out the shysters who are promising economic revival,” Staughton told me at their apartment. “New electric cars being made in Youngstown? That’s baloney.”

Youngstown is now Trump country and could very well go for Vance in the Senate, despite Tim Ryan’s local roots. On August 19th, Vance held a rally in Girard boosted by Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor with Presidential ambitions. Both men are well-to-do lawyers with Ivy League degrees and corporate backing who engage in a practiced folksiness. They are creations of the modern G.O.P., having discovered in the “great right-wing groundswell an easy shortcut to realizing their ambitions,” as Thomas Frank wrote in the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” At the rally, Vance and DeSantis waged not class war but culture war. “I think that we need people in Florida, Ohio, all across the country, to say we are not going to let this woke-mob virus run over our institutions,” DeSantis said, referring to government agencies, businesses, and schools. “We’re not going to surrender to woke.”

 
Republican J. D. Vance, like his Democratic opponent for Ohio’s open Senate seat, believes that U.S. manufacturers have unfairly lost ground to China.Photograph by Gaelen Morse / Bloomberg / Getty 

In early August, I went to see Vance at the Ohio State Fair. He was there, the sleeves of his periwinkle dress shirt cinched up just so, to meet with farmers’ groups and participate in a rib-eating contest sponsored by the Ohio Pork Council. The Columbus teachers’ union was threatening to go on strike, so at a press conference, I asked for Vance’s opinion on collective bargaining. “As an abstract matter, yes, I support collective bargaining. Do I support the teachers’ union shutting down the schools for two years? No, I don’t,” he said. (Columbus schools have gone online intermittently during the pandemic.) In a state with a proud union history, a Republican candidate must be selectively critical of organized labor. It’s safe to appear with the Teamsters or the United Steelworkers, but not with the teachers’ or nurses’ union, regardless of the weight they pull in the economy. Many Rust Belt cities that once depended on a single industrial employer now rely on revenue from meds and eds(hospitals and schools).

East Liverpool, on the Ohio–West Virginia border, is one such city. It was home to some two hundred dishware factories—including Knowles, Taylor & Knowles, whose ironstone, bone china, and Lotus Ware porcelain were celebrated around the world. The city’s kilns were mostly extinguished by the early nineteen-thirties, though a couple of ceramics makers are left. Local industry has otherwise been confined to a pair of nuclear power plants and a coal plant (reportedly slated for closure next year) that’s owned by Energy Harbor—formerly known as FirstEnergy, a utility infamous for bribing politicians. Today, East Liverpool’s largest employer, and one of its largest buildings, is the local hospital.

Melissa Cain was born and raised in East Liverpool and now works at the hospital as a registered nurse. She has been in the profession for sixteen years and earns thirty-five dollars per hour, less than half the going rate for fill-in travel nurses in the region. The hospital was taken over by a California-based conglomerate in 2016, part of a trend in health care toward consolidation, especially in rural areas. Ohio’s own Cleveland Clinic, which employs fifty-two thousand workers in the state, has aggressively bought out and stripped down smaller hospitals and clinics. Since the takeover of the East Liverpool hospital, Cain told me over breakfast, understaffing has become much worse. At the height of the pandemic, so many people quit that “new nurses were training new nurses,” she said.

Cain is a member of the Ohio nurses’ union, which is pushing for legislation to establish minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. (Ryan’s support of safe-staffing legislation earned him the union’s endorsement.) An employee of the union told me that registered nurses are leaving the profession in large numbers, creating a dire labor shortage in Ohio hospitals and nursing homes. A West African immigrant who works as a licensed practical nurse in a Columbus nursing home (and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation) told me that she often looks after twenty to thirty patients on her own—a standard ratio for long-term care. “I’ve never worked as a nurse in a union workplace,” she told me. “I’m definitely in favor of one.” She is paid around twenty-nine dollars per hour, and works sixty hours per week to support herself and her young child. The average nursing-home employee in Ohio earns much less: just thirty-five thousand dollars per year, compared with thirty-eight thousand in Indiana and Illinois and forty thousand in Pennsylvania.

 

The health-care sector is critical to Ohio’s economy and has the advantage of being impervious to offshoring; yet it fails to inspire the same civic pride or collective identification as factory work. Perhaps this is because the industry is so feminized. In the Senate race, neither Ryan nor Vance has prioritized health care, with the exception of abortion. Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, in late June, Ohio instituted a near-total abortion ban, which has proved to be unpopular and led Democrats to emphasize their pro-choice qualifications. Ryan, who until recently opposed abortion himself, has called out Vance for praising the fall of Roe.

In the contest for Ohio’s governor, which will also be decided this November, abortion is an increasingly urgent concern. Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton, is challenging the incumbent Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and has framed abortion in terms of workforce development. Whaley recently held an event with Black elected officials and entrepreneurs at A Cut Above the Rest, a barber shop and community center in Columbus. During a question-and-answer session, a man standing next to an old-fashioned barber chair asked what the candidate planned to do about abortion. She explained that she would try to re-legalize the procedure, not only as a matter of public health but, just as important, to retain and attract young Ohio workers. “Health access is a jobs issue,” she said.

On a Wednesday night, Ryan arrived late to a town hall for undecided voters in Lancaster, a small city in south-central Ohio. Forty or so people, overwhelmingly in the A.A.R.P. bracket, sat in an air-conditioned lodge overlooking Lake Loretta. Ryan, wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and sneakers, gave an opening speech that focussed on jobs and economic development and pleaded for unity across party lines—a unity facilitated by challenging China. “I want this race to be about us recognizing that the people who are most happy with us fighting with each other is the Communist Chinese,” he said.

I asked him after the event about the pushback from Asian American groups in Ohio, who’d called his rhetoric against China “dangerous and unacceptable” and accused him of scapegoating “Asian countries and Asian people” instead of holding corporations to account. Did he worry that his language might inflame public sentiment against Asian immigrants? “I certainly hope not,” he said. “If you’re an American and you’re here, you are on the team, which means a lot of Asian America is on the team.”

A few days later, I visited Noppadol and Kanokwan Mangmeesub, a couple in Dayton who both emigrated from Thailand. Last January, someone spray-painted “Fuck U China Virus” on the exterior wall of their Vietnamese and Thai restaurant, Xuân, near the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. A few weeks later, someone set the roof on fire. (No one was ever arrested.) The Mangmeesubs told me that they hadn’t closely followed the reports of Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Filipino Americans being beaten and even killed since the start of the pandemic. “I was surprised I was a victim. There’s a lot of Asian people—why would that happen to me?” Noppadol remembered thinking.

The couple shuttered their restaurant after the arson and looked for a new location. They eventually opened HomeStyle Thai Bistro, a stall in the 2nd Street Market, a repurposed freight hall in downtown Dayton. Business was good when I visited for a late lunch of tofu pad Thai. Kanokwan told me at the register that they’re much busier now. Noppadol took a break from prepping a pot of chicken stock to sit and chat. He and his wife had mostly recovered from the events of last year, and hoped to open a second restaurant. He didn’t want to connect the vandalism and arson to Trump—Noppadol is as much a patron of Fox News as MSNBC—“but this kind of stuff is coming from him,” he said.

J. D. Vance has periodically launched into his own tirades against China, but in a manner more Ryanesque than Trumpian. “Do we want to ship our jobs to China or keep them right here in America for American workers and the American people?” he asked after winning the Republican primary. Compare that to this statement by Ryan in a recent super-pac ad: “When are we going to have the guts to level the playing field? The guts to take on China? The guts to do what’s right so our kids and grandkids can thrive in the United States?”

Some seven hundred thousand Ohioans were born abroad, and immigrants to the state are much more likely to be employed than non-immigrants. Yet neither Vance nor Ryan has much to say about the place of immigrants in Ohio’s economy, including its remaining factories. In the town of Springboro, just south of Dayton, I met with Hoai Nguyen, who works for a Vietnamese American company that builds car and airplane interiors. Nguyen, whose extended family settled in Ohio after the Vietnam War, took me around a beige, air-conditioned office, then past a steel door into a loud, sweltering factory. A few dozen people, mostly immigrants from Southeast Asia and Latin America, were operating machines that heat-molded carpet and stamped out wheel liners. The products were made in the U.S.A., for corporations like Chrysler, even if the people who made them were not.

Ohio has many such small and midsize factories, which cumulatively employ tens of thousands. But only a brand-name mega-project, like the Intel chip factory in New Albany, will attract the sustained interest of politicians—and a corresponding windfall of tax breaks and other public subsidies. Donning a fluorescent vest and hard hat, I went to see the Intel site with Jim Evers, a vice-president dispatched from the company’s offices in Arizona. It was August, and an array of yellow earthmovers was flattening what used to be fields of corn and soy that stretched to the horizon. A month later, Biden would stand at the same spot during a groundbreaking ceremony and declare “that the industrial Midwest is back.” Evers told me that this would be the first “fab,” or semiconductor fabrication plant, built from scratch in the U.S. in four decades. It is set to open in 2025, around the same time as additional fabs in Arizona and, possibly, Germany. Intel’s expansion was critical to “balancing the supply chain” and bringing semiconductors “back to the U.S.” from East Asia, he said. In the nineties, the U.S. produced nearly forty per cent of the world’s chips; now it makes just twelve per cent. Yet a purely domestic supply chain is impossible. Intel sources photoresists, a crucial chip-making material, from Japan and hundred-million-dollar lithography machines from the Netherlands; its finished microchips are assembled, tested, and packaged in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Costa Rica.

Intel and the state of Ohio say that the project will create seven thousand construction jobs and three thousand permanent positions for manufacturing technicians and engineers. Employees will reportedly earn an average of a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars per year in salary and stock options, though the entry-level technicians at Intel’s plants in Arizona and Oregon start at a salary of around sixty thousand, working twelve-hour shifts in clean-room bunny suits. (Intel would not confirm exact pay or benefit packages.) The fabs will produce semiconductors directly for Intel and serve as a foundry for other companies. Because of the plant’s location and the skills needed for some of the jobs, Intel is likely to draw on graduates from Ohio State University, which is known for its program in materials science and engineering. The potential benefit for other kinds of workers is less clear, though Intel boasts of a significant multiplier effect.

 

All told, Ohio has allocated more than two billion dollars to Intel and the wealthy suburb of New Albany, supplementing billions in federal funds under the chips Act. Tim Ryan and Sherrod Brown have praised the project for creating “good union jobs,” but the excavation workers I saw on site did not belong to a construction union, and Intel has not agreed to remain neutral in the event of a future organizing drive at the factory. During our tour of the site, Evers said only that the company would abide by human-rights principles and make a point of hiring Ohioans, women, veterans, and African Americans. Before Biden signed off on the chips Act, Bernie Sanders argued that any firm receiving subsidies under the law should agree to keep all jobs in the U.S., invest in operations rather than buying back stock to the benefit of shareholders, and respect employees’ right to unionize and collectively bargain. Lisa Malloy, a spokesperson for Intel, said that the company plans to spend more than forty billion dollars over the next three years in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and has a history of coöperation with construction unions.

Of the jobs Intel promises to bring to Ohio, how many might be filled by the people who’ve been displaced from sites like the G.E. Lighting factories in Bucyrus and Logan? A job making light bulbs does not automatically prepare a worker to inspect microscopic chips. Retraining takes humility, time, and money; and not everyone can uproot themselves for a new career. Before the light-bulb workers in Bucyrus received their final notice of termination, they managed to negotiate a decent severance package through their union—two weeks’ pay for every year worked, plus six months of health insurance—but none of the workers I met in August had found a new position yet. Barb Basore, whose extended family has given more than five hundred years of combined service to General Electric since 1941, felt pessimistic about landing anything in manufacturing.

Horsley, the coater operator on the overnight shift, told me that she was considering going back to school for hairdressing, a career essentially resistant to globalization. She identifies as a Republican, but intends to vote for Ryan in the Senate race because of his attempts to save their light-bulb factory. I asked how she felt about losing her job to China. She didn’t resent the Chinese workers, she told me: “They’re probably just trying to make a living as well.” She added that she, and her household, had no right to judge the nation of China, either. “I personally can’t, because my husband,” she said. Her husband works for a manufacturer of injection-molding machines, in a factory in central Ohio. The company’s North American division is based in the state, but its corporate headquarters is much farther away: in Guangdong, China. ♦

 

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E. Tammy Kim is a contributing writer at The New Yorker.
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