美国国家公共电台 NPR Rural America Supported Trump But Will His Policies Support Them?

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Small town America deserves much of the credit for putting President Trump¹ in the White House. Rural voters in swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania helped tip the election in his favor. Those small towns that once relied on mines or factories are now struggling, and they're counting on President Trump's policies to change that. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports.

BRIAN MANN, BYLINE²: It's a cold, snowy day, and I'm standing³ on the waterfront in Moriah, N.Y. It's a tiny, sleepy place on the shore of Lake Champlain. Not so long ago, this was a major industrial port. Iron ore carved out of the hills here was packed onto train cars and barges⁴. That iron ore helped build America's cities.

TOM SCOZZAFAVA: Then it all came to an abrupt⁵ halt.

MANN: Tom Scozzafava grew up here and serves now as town supervisor⁶. He remembers the good times, and he remembers the summer the good times stopped.

SCOZZAFAVA: Nineteen seventy-one - the miners - 600 of them - went home for their annual August vacation and were never called back.

MANN: It didn't just happen in one town or one state. Beginning after World War II and accelerating in the '70s and '80s, rural economists⁷ say much of small town America began a painful decline, shedding jobs, losing population. These are the parts of America where voters felt like Donald Trump was speaking directly to them.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

MANN: Here's the new president giving his inaugural⁸ address.

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TRUMP: Rusted-out factories, scattered⁹ like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.

MANN: Critics pounced¹⁰ on the president's language, suggesting it was too bleak¹¹, too apocalyptic¹². But rural policy experts like Dave Swenson say it's pretty accurate for a lot of small town America. Swenson studies rural communities and economic development for the state of Iowa.

DAVID SWENSON: Two-thirds of our 99 counties have posted population declines. Those folks have had to migrate.

MANN: Young people moved away to the cities. Main streets dried up. Swenson says people left behind feel angry, humiliated¹³.

SWENSON: What's left out in many of these places are the people that were unable to migrate, people that were unable to find new occupations or re-educate themselves into new trades.

MANN: The question now is whether Donald Trump's policies and ideas can change things, driving jobs and investment and people back to places like rural Iowa or Moriah, N.Y. Rural experts I interviewed are skeptical¹⁴. They say taking a tougher line with China or Mexico likely won't cause a surge of new manufacturing in small towns. Chuck Fluharty heads an organization called the Rural Policy Research Institute.

CHUCK FLUHARTY: That 65 to 80 percent of the manufacturing losses in our country are directly related to automation and technology.

MANN: Those kinds of job cuts can't be reversed by tariffs¹⁵ or trade deals. Fluharty says what rural America needs is an investment in what he describes as human capital - health care and education. He also says small towns need to open their doors to immigrants.

FLUHARTY: The rural regions that will thrive in the future are the ones where that diversity is strongly expressed.

MANN: But efforts to create any kind of path to citizenship¹⁶ for undocumented families living now in rural America seem unlikely to move forward. Rural economists say the new administration could boost some regions in the short term with big investments in infrastructure¹⁷, roads and bridges. Parts of the country could also see a boom from increased oil or gas production.

Still, most policy experts think the long-term trends hurting small towns - urbanization, globalization and mechanization - won't change much under President Trump. And if he can't deliver on his promise to make rural America great again, this could be one of the biggest political challenges he faces. For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann.

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