Im-Politic: More Evidence That Trump Should Really be Trump

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2018 elections, African Americans, Democrats, election 2020, establishment Republicans, Im-Politic, Immigration, impeachment, Jacob Blake, Joe Biden, Joseph Simonson, Kamala Harris, Kenosha, law enforcement, Mickey Kaus, Obamacare, Open Borders, police shooting, race relations, regulations, Republican National Committee, Republicans, riots, RNC, Rust Belt, tax cuts, trade policy, Trump, Washington Examiner, white working class

Since the early months of Donald Trump’s presidency, I and many of those who backed his election have been frustrated by his frequent support for and even prioritizing of issues and positions championed by orthodox Republicans and conseratives. After all, there was little reason to believe that he won the Republican nomination, much less the White House, because he was focused laser-like on cutting taxes and regulations or eliminating Obamacare. If that’s what either Republican or overall voters wanted, then you’d think that an orthodox Republican would have wound up running against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – and triumphing.

One reason I came up with to explain the early burst of conservative traditionalism from Mr Trump (highlighted by a failed effort at healthcare reform and a successful full court press waged to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017) was his need to make sure that the establishment wing of his party stayed with him if he faced an impeachment.

His gambit worked, but even though the impeachment threat is gone, I still hear the President talking up the tax cuts and regulation thing way too much for my tastes. So it’s more than a little interesting to have just learned that, at least according to a report last week in the Washington [D.C.] Examiner, I haven’t been alone. (Or, more accurately, I and a handful of nationalist-populist analysts like Mickey Kaus haven’t been alone.) In this article, Examiner correspondent Joseph Simonson contends that some folks connected with the Republican National Committee (RNC) came to the same conclusion in the late summer and early fall of 2018. And just as important – their analysis came just before the GOP suffered major setbacks in that year’s Congressional elections after doubling down on conventional Republicanism.

Among the highlights of the report (whose existence the RNC denies):

>”Voter data from areas such as Kenosha County, Wisconsin, [we’ll return to this astonishing coincidence below] and other exurban communities, the individual said, showed a troubling trend. Although voters there very narrowly backed Trump in 2016, President Barack Obama’s margins were in the double digits in 2008 and 2012.”

>”Unlike members of Trump’s base, who can be trusted to vote for just about any Republican candidate, these voters feel no strong affinity toward the GOP. Moreover, the interests of those who live in communities such as Kenosha differ greatly from those who live in the Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania.

“These Rust Belt voters favor stronger social safety nets and hawkishness on trade, rather than typical GOP orthodoxies such as lower tax rates and an easier regulatory environment for businesses. That is not to say these voters oppose those things, but the rhetorical obsession from GOP donors and members of the party do little to excite one-time Trump voters.”

>“Back in 2018 the general response to the report from others who worked at the RNC, said one individual, was, ‘well, we have socialism’ as an attack against Democrats and boasts about their new digital voter turnout apparatus.’”

>”Steve Bannon, the former aide to the president who was indicted last week on fraud charges, had viewed the same report a year ago and concluded that the upcoming election against Biden looked like a “blow out” in the former vice president’s favor.”

But let’s get back to the Kenosha point – which of course is unusually interesting and important given the race- and police-shooting-related violence that just convulsed the small city recently. It’s also interesting and important because the alleged report’s treatment of racial issues indicates that the authors weren’t completely prescient.

Specifically, they faulted the RNC for wasting time and resources on a  “coalition building” effort aimed at “enlisting the support from black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who make only a marginal difference in the Midwest and [that] can prove potentially damaging if more likely Republicans are neglected.”

Explained one person quoted by Simonson (and possibly one of the authors): “Lots of these people at the RNC are in a state of denial. The base of the GOP are white people, and that gives the party an advantage in national elections. You could not have a voter operation in California whatsoever, and it wouldn’t make any difference, but the RNC does because they don’t want to admit those states are lost forever.” .

Yet even before the eruption of violence in Kenosha (and too many other communities), this analysis overlooked a crucial reality: There was never any reason to assume that, in the Midwest Rust Belt states so crucial to the President’s 2016 victory and yet won so narrowly, that significant portions of the African American vote couldn’t be attracted without alienating the white working class. For both blacks and whites alike in industrial communities have been harmed by the same pre-Trump trade policies strongly supported by his chief November rival Joe Biden and many other Democrats. (For one example of the impact on African Americans, see this post.) Moreover, among the biggest losers from the Open Borders-friendly immigration policies now openly championed, instead of stealthily fostered, by the Democratic Party mainstream, have been African Americans.

It’s not that the President and Republicans had to convince massive numbers of African Americans with these arguments. A few dozen thousand could be more than enough to make a big difference this fall. And there’s some polling data indicating that the strategy was working even before the opening of a Republican convention that featured numerous African American speakers.

Now of course we’re post-the Jacob Blake shooting by Kenosha police and the subsequent rioting and vigilantism. We’re also post-the Biden choice of woman-of-color Kamala Harris as his running mate. Will those developments sink the Trump outreach effort to African Americans and validate the 2018 memo’s arguments?

Certainly the Harris choice doesn’t look like a game-changer. The California Senator, you’ll remember, was decisively rejected by African American voters during the Democratic primaries. I’m less certain about the Kenosha Effect. On the one hand, Mr. Trump has expressed precious little empathy for black victims of police shootings. On the other hand, he has villified the rioting and looting that are destroying the businesses – including African-American-owned – relied on by many urban black neighborhoods in cities that have long stagnated, at best, under Democratic Mayors. And this poll I highlighted a few weeks ago presents significant evidence that most African Americans have no interest in fewer police on the streets where they live.

It’s not hard to imagine a Trump campaign message developing over the next two months that strikes a much better balance. And an early test case looks set for tomorrow with the President’s planned visit to Kenosha. Somewhat harder to imagine is Mr. Trump significantly downplaying issues like tax and regulatory cuts, and ending Obamacare. As for his priorities if he wins reelection? At this point, the evidence is so mixed that I feel clueless. So stay tuned!

Making News: New Podcast on Globalization, Breitbart Cite – & More!

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agriculture, America Trends, Breitbart.com, globalization, IndustryToday, Jobs, John Carney, Larry Rifkin, Lifezette.com, Making News, manufacturing, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Rust Belt, Trade, Trump

I’m pleased to announce some new media appearances this week.

First, here’s a link to a long interview on trade, globalization, the U.S. economy – and, of course, the Trump effect – I gave to Larry Rifkin’s America Trends podcast.  It’s nearly an hour, but I hope lots of you will stick with it for at least a while, because Larry is one of the best interviewers I’ve run across in my decades of experience with the media.

Second, IndustryToday, which I’ll shortly start writing for as a regular columnist, has reposted my RealityChek post documenting what a failure the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been for American agriculture – despite endless claims to the contrary.  Here’s the link.

Third, on Tuesday, John Carney of Breitbart.com (yes, the one and only) quoted my views in a post he put up on the news that a Chinese entity is thinking of buying the prized Jeep division of Fiat Chrysler.  You can read it at this link.

Finally, Lifezette.com featured my views and manufacturing jobs data in this Monday post on what voters in Rust Belt swing states think of President Trump’s performance so far.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trump Voters Look Smarter on Trade than Big Media Journalists

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2016 election, automotive, Brookings Institution, China, exports, free trade agreements, industrial machinery, Mexico, Ronald Brownstein, Rust Belt, The Atlantic, Trade Deficits, trade policy, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Boy, those working class Americans who voted for Donald Trump for president. How ignorant! At least that’s the clear message sent by Ronald Brownstein’s recent article for The Atlantic reporting on new findings about the America’s trade performance and prospects and their likely impact on one of Mr. Trump’s main constituencies.

In Brownstein’s words, “If Trump’s moves ultimately reduce trade flows and squeeze exports, the biggest U.S. losers will include not only big metropolitan areas that almost entirely supported Hillary Clinton in November, but also the smaller places that provided the core of Trump’s support.” His evidence? A new Brookings Institution study purporting to show that (Brownstein’s words) “Although the big metropolitan areas generate the most exports, selling to the world is often proportionally more important to smaller places.”

More specifically, writes the author:

“The metropolitan areas where exports account for the largest total share of local economic output are smaller and midsized communities that are almost all hubs for either manufacturing or energy production. These places read like a recap of Trump’s campaign-travel itinerary: Columbus, Elkhart, Kokomo, and Lafayette in Indiana; Racine, Fond du Lac, and Sheboygan in Wisconsin; Lake Charles and Baton Rouge in Louisiana; Waterloo, Iowa; Hickory and Rocky Mount in North Carolina,; and Midland and Battle Creek in Michigan. The list of metropolitan areas where exports provide the greatest share of total gross domestic product doesn’t reach a big city until Seattle—which ranks about 40th.”

So what could be more obvious – and pathetic – than the conclusion that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters essentially opted to shoot themselves in both feet, at best?

Brownstein and the Brookings specialists do offer one explanation – though it plainly reinforces the impression created of Trump voters as know-nothings:

“Many of those smaller places…would initially welcome a more protectionist trade policy, on the belief that it will force manufacturers now relocating or building new facilities abroad to reinvest in the United States. The downside for them is less visible, but potentially more consequential: the cost to their local economies if retaliation from other nations, or simply a diminished effort to open other markets, leads to fewer sales from American firms to the world.”

Distorting these shortsighted Trump supporter views even more? “[I]t’s difficult for local officials to keep that broader perspective in mind when trade’s losers are so much more visible than its beneficiaries.”

Here’s a pretty big rub, though. Although most of the Mainstream Media for decades have swallowed claims from think tanks like Brookings about recent and current trade policies supercharging exports and benefiting the U.S. economy and its workers on net, the data tell the opposite story. Here are two leading (but by no means unusual) examples that have directly and powerfully affected the kinds of Trump strongholds listed in Brownstein’s article.

The first concerns U.S. trade in industrial machinery – a broad category of products that includes machine tools and construction equipment and farm machinery and engines and turbines and industrial heating and cooling equipment (think Carrier). Let’s see what’s happened on the trade front since 1997. That’s when the U.S. government adopted its current predominant system for classifying sectors of the economy, which has therefore generated nearly two decades of apples-to-apple statistics. It’s also when the first big effects began to be felt of major trade liberalization decisions made starting in the early part of the decade with places like Mexico and Canada — which were advertised overwhelmingly as “Big Emerging Markets” for American-made goods and services.

In 1997, this big segment of domestic manufacturing ran a $17.39 billion trade surplus. By 2015, this surplus had become a $14.33 billion deficit. And in the 2016 presidential election year, that shortfall was up nearly 60 percent through November (the latest figures available). Some net export bonanza.

The second example concerns the automotive sector – which has also been kind of important to the Rust Belt economy. In 1997, vehicles and parts combined racked up a trade deficit of $63.07 billion. In 2015, this figure was just under $178 billion – much bigger than the machinery gap. And through November of last year, it too had risen – though by a more modest 2.25 percent. Still, no export bonanza here, either.

And it’s the Trump voters who are ignorant?

Following Up: Where Trump on Trade Falls Short

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2016 election, advanced manufacturing, apparel, Donald Trump, Follwing Up, Hillary Clinton, inflation-adjusted growth, Made in Washington trade deficit, multinational corporations, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, offshoring lobby, recovery, regulation, Rust Belt, steel, subsidies, taxes, The Race to the Bottom, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade law, World Trade Organization, WTO

Donald Trump has just given a deadly serious, detailed, and common-sensical speech about the need for overhauling American trade policy, and the establishment media has decided to respond largely by dredging up the fatuous observation that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee himself produces his name-brand apparel overseas.

Before dealing with some of the genuine – though anything but fatal – shortcomings of Trump’s trade speech, let me (again) dispose of this ignorance-based cheap shot: The very trade policies that Trump has been attacking have practically destroyed the domestic U.S. apparel industry. When Trump claims that it’s nearly impossible to make garments in this country profitably anymore, he’s absolutely right. Indeed, the Federal Reserve’s industrial production data show that, since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in January, 1994, and launched the current, offshoring-focused stage of U.S. trade policy, domestic garment output is down nearly 83 percent in real terms. That’s a bloodbath.

Yes, that means that some companies still produce clothing in the United States. But it also means that the biggest money in the industry has taken the hint that opening the American market to competition from penny-wage developing countries with no meaningful environmental or worker safety regulation has been an invitation to shut down or join the party and offshore. Any journalist who fails to mention these facts is either clueless or trying to sell you a bill of goods.

At the same time, since most of the public isn’t well informed about trade and manufacturing specifics, either. And since a torrent of such slanted coverage – which has been echoed by Trump’s presumptive November rival, Hillary Clinton – can definitely affect voter judgment, Trump needs to make it as difficult as possible for opponents to portray him as a know-nothing or a hypocrite on what he clearly sees as a core issue. This is where his Tuesday speech – which overall, I liked – fell somewhat short. Here are some important examples:

>Trump deserves a lot of credit for pointing out that misguided policies have killed not only employment – especially in trade-sensitive manufacturing – but growth throughout the economy. But he left off the table eye-opening figures on just how great the trade toll has been. As I’ve documented, during this feeble economic recovery alone, the growth of that portion of the trade deficit directly influenced by trade policy (what I call the Made in Washington trade deficit) has so far slowed this already feeble expansion by some 20 percent. That’s more than $400 billion after inflation, and he should have defied anyone to insist that huge numbers of jobs haven’t been destroyed as a result.

>The likely GOP standard bearer also rightly blasted American political and business elites for pushing these damaging policies. But explaining exactly why will not only educate the public – it will further infuriate voters. As I’ve written repeatedly, and most comprehensively in my book, The Race to the Bottom, the offshoring focus that has dominated U.S. trade policy since the early 1990s resulted from American multinational corporations realizing that expanding commerce with low-income countries would enable them to improve their own (though not the nation’s) competitiveness and boost profits by supplying the high-price American economy from super-low cost and largely unregulated production sites.

In other words, for all the talk about gigantic, rapidly growing third world markets, post-NAFTA trade deals weren’t mainly about expanding American exports – and therefore growth, employment, and wages. They were mainly about expanding U.S. imports from the multinationals’ new foreign production sites. That is, big American business wanted Americans to keep playing their roles as consumers of the products they made. They just didn’t want them to keep playing their roles as producers of these products. You don’t think a critical mass of voters would be outraged to hear this?

>Trump’s vow to file suits in the World Trade Organization to open foreign markets to U.S.-origin goods and services and halt predatory foreign trade practices is completely inadequate. As I’ve also written, the WTO is far from a U.S.-like trade court where objective magistrates render impartial justice. It’s an anti-American kangaroo court numerically dominated by foreign trade powers whose overwhelming interest lies in keeping the U.S. market much more open to their goods and services than their markets are to U.S. exports. That’s largely why even when the United States does win WTO cases, the process takes so long that American interests have been dealt decisive setbacks.

In fact, that’s also why the Offshoring Lobby pushed so hard back in the 1990s for U.S. Entry into the WTO. They knew that it would give predatory foreign trade powers substantial legal immunity from American efforts to deal with illegal subsidization, dumping, currency manipulation, and the like – and that the factories they moved and built abroad would benefit from these market-distorting practices at the expense of domestic American producers and their workers.

In other words, Trump shouldn’t be arguing for working through the WTO. He should be promising to seek an American withdrawal.

>Trump’s related promise to file more suits against predatory foreign traders in the U.S. trade law system is sorely inadequate for three main reasons. First, as suggested above, the WTO nullifies most of America’s legal authority to use such unilateral mechanisms. Second, the domestic trade law system is almost as slow-moving as the WTO. And third, this legalistic set of procedures is by definition piecemeal and reactive. If Trump thinks that American trade law can help make the U.S. economy great again in his lifetime, he’s dreaming.

>I recognize that the steel industry has acquired iconic status in American culture and politics. It also remains incredibly important economically. But Trump’s exclusive reliance on steel’s recent woes to illustrate what’s wrong with American trade policy unfortunately reinforces the wrongheaded conventional wisdom that trade policy critics are naively obsessed with reviving so-called Rust Belt industries.

What Trump should have added is that manufacturing sectors running sizable trade deficits also include semiconductors, electro-medical devices, all categories of machine tools, farm machinery, construction equipment, ball bearings, telecommunications equipment (not including smartphones), and pharmaceuticals. Believe me, I could go on. And that’s not your classic Rust Belt stuff. Are all these domestic producers hopelessly uncompetitive, Trump should ask? Or are global trade markets unmistakably rigged even against American-made products falling into any knowledgeable definition of advanced manufacturing?

>Trump clearly felt the need to throw some red meat to traditional Republicans and conservatives by also promising to boost the productive sectors of the American economy by getting rid of “wasteful rules and regulations” and cutting taxes in order to “make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.”

Of course, there’s an important, legitimate debate about the proper scope of regulations and the proper level of taxation for both corporations and individuals. Think though, of the outreach potential to independent and even many Democratic voters had Trump added something along these lines:

“But we also have to remember that many of our regulations also serve the vital purpose of protecting us from dangers like polluted air, water, and land; and unsafe food and workplaces. By freeing America’s domestic companies of the need to compete against rivals free to ignore these goals, we preserve regulations reflecting values we should be proud of, and ensure that we remain a genuine first world country.”

And let’s not forget arguments made in Trump’s tax plan (though in a form that’s surely vastly overstated) but neglected in this speech: All else equal, the faster the economy’s real (as opposed to bubble-ized) growth, the stronger its ability to generate the tax revenues that are both politically acceptable and needed to finance true national needs and popular national desires in a responsible way.

Again, I really do believe that this Trump speech was the best Americans have heard on trade in decades. But that bar has been abysmally low. If Trump wants to make America “Greater Than Ever Before” ensuring that his trade positions fit this description will help a lot.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New Wrinkle but Same Old Manufacturing Renaissance Fairy Tale

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Akron, Brain Belt, IndustryWeek, inflation-adjusted growth, Laura Putre, manufacturing, Ohio, plastics, polymers, recession, recovery, rubber, Rust Belt, technology, The Smartest Places on Earth, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Akron, Ohio, has become one of my favorite places in the world – honest to gosh. I’ve made some wonderful friends there over the years, had some great times, and learned lots from area manufacturers I’ve been lucky enough to get to know.

And because I’ve gotten pretty well acquainted with the city, and studied its economy, I was immediately suspicious of the recent IndustryWeek post spotlighting a book touting Akron as a leading example of “how the Rust Belt is turning into the Brain Belt.”

The thesis of The Smartest Places on Earth, by a former leading Dutch financial journalist and a Washington, D.C.-based economic consultant, has the ring of plausibility. For all its obvious struggles, America’s midwestern manufacturing heartland remains blessed with a wealth of engineering and technological talent and skilled workers. Therefore, it seems well positioned to capitalize on the promise of the newest technologies – which often spring in part from older technologies – and all their outsized growth and employment benefits.

Akron is also a plausible example of this transition. As IndustryWeek reporter Laura Putre correctly observes, “Times were dire for years” in this former center of rubber production. (Think “tires.”) But

“gradually, the region began to capitalize on its existing strengths—the material science expertise of its research universities, its workforce of engineers, scientists and tradespeople—and reinvent itself as the center of the polymer industry. According to statistics from the city’s website, upwards of 35,000 people in the Akron area are now employed in approximately 400 polymer-related companies.”

But here’s the problem: Despite making this transformation, at least according to the most authoritative (U.S. government) data available, Akron remains not only an American growth laggard, but an American manufacturing laggard. And P.S., I’m not talking about employment, which is what practically everyone thinks of when gauging manufacturing’s performance. There’s no doubt that, thanks to productivity improvement, industry today can turn out as much or more product than ever with fewer employees. I’m talking about output – the real measure of the sector’s health.

If Akron was getting so successful, why did its inflation-adjusted manufacturing production fall by so much more during the last recession (26.71 percent) than that of America’s cities as a whole (9.71 percent)?

Maybe something about the recession hit Akron harder than the rest of the country’s urban areas, and since the recovery has begun, it’s done much better? The numbers don’t bear out that thesis, either. From 2009 through 2014 (the latest figures available), Akron’s real manufacturing production rose by just 6.70 percent. Overall U.S. manufacturing urban output was up by 10.69 percent.

As a result, as of 2014, manufacturing in America’s cities was just 0.60 percent smaller than the peak it reached in 2007, just before the recession struck. In Akron, industry was still 21.80 percent below that peak.

The Smartest Places on Earth looks right on one point: The plastics and rubber industry (government data don’t separate them) helped prevent Akron manufacturing from performing even worse. During the recession, its after-inflation production dropped by only 6.52 percent, and since 2010, it’s risen by 19.45 percent. (These more detailed data only go up to 2013.)

But that improvement hasn’t been nearly enough to offset subpar performances in other major manufacturing sectors, especially fabricated metal products, machinery, and chemicals. Largely as a result, in real terms, manufacturing’s share of the Akron economy dipped from 15.63 percent in 2009 to 15.45 percent in 2014. (For U.S. metropolitan areas as a whole, it inched up from 11.51 percent to 11.55 percent.)

And that’s not because the rest of Akron’s economy has been killing it, even relatively speaking, during this historically feeble economic recovery. Since 2009, its constant-dollar growth has trailed that of American cities as a whole by 9.04 percent to 10.30 percent.

One of The Smartest Places on Earth‘s authors told Putre in an interview that the results of the kinds of transformations foreseen in the book “start to show up really in ten plus years.” And certainly no one should expect miracles, or anything close, overnight. But in the last year, American manufacturing has gone through an especially tough stretch, and Akron manufacturers told me on a recent trip that their area has been no exception. So just as with claims of a general U.S. Manufacturing renaissance, a heavy burden of proof remains with those insisting that a Brain Belt transformation will be a Rust Belt miracle worker.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Flint’s Water Crisis is Also a De-industrialization Story

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automotive, Detroit, Flint, General Motors, healthcare services, Jobs, manufacturing, Mexico, municipal finance, poverty, Rust Belt, services, taxes, third world, wages, water pollution, {What's Left of) Our Economy

When I began reading about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, my first thoughts were of the Mexican factory towns near the U.S. border, where rapid and unregulated industrialization driven by manufacturing for the American market had produced pollution nightmares – including dangerously poisoned drinking water.

The shameful situation in Flint has many causes, but one that’s been neglected has been a development that makes the city a depressing mirror image of much of northern Mexico – rapid de-industrialization, stemming from the plight of the U.S. automobile industry, that has robbed Flint of the ability to pay for the kinds of public services Americans for decades have come to expect in a financially sustainable way.

According to Flint’s auditors, the city has long provided its citizens with “ a full range of services, including police and fire protection, the construction and maintenance of streets and other infrastructures, recreational activities and cultural events, water and sewer services, and sanitation/garbage pickup services.” The water crisis has made sadly clear that this standard agenda was in fact unaffordable for Flint. But the gap between the city’s first-world ambitions and resources that are markedly below that level has been evident for years from its chronic budget deficits and its heavy reliance on state and federal aid.

The earliest Flint budget figures on-line are from 2002, and show a $7.4 million deficit on $457.7 million in expenses and $445.3 million in receipts. Only 10.13 percent of those receipts came from combined income and property taxes. More than three fourths of the city’s take was generated by the Hurley Medical Center’s revenues. Last year’s figures make the city’s finances and tax base look stronger. The city ran a $568 million surplus on spending of $147.3 million and revenues of $147.9 million. And taxes represented 22.85 percent of those total receipts.

Those overall numbers, however, should tell you that something’s a little fishy. In fact, in 2011, the hospital was in effect taken off the municipal budget – despite its profitability. For that last year it was on those books, Flint’s government spent $567.3 million and took in $523.2 million, for a $44.1 million shortfall that was much larger proportionately than 2002’s. And taxes were a mere 6.15 percent of city revenue.

Even more disturbing, that 2015 Flint budget also removed all of 2014’s $24 million worth of sewer expenses and some $23 million of that year’s $44.2 million in water expenses. So even these necessities had revealed themselves as completely beyond Flint’s means.

Why is Flint is such a fix? Bad government is surely a big part of the answer. But so is dramatic economic deterioration. As has been widely noted, the city’s population is disproportionately poor and African American. But it’s also crucial to understand that over the last decade alone, Flint has steadily lost much of the material wherewithal that any municipality needs to be functional by recent American standards. Let’s start with the broadest economic indicators and then examine the trends in greater detail.

It’s tough for any country or community to succeed without economic growth, and Flint is a long-time laggard. According to Commerce Department figures (available at this interactive data base), from 2001 (the year before those earliest on-line financial reports date from) through 2014, Flint’s economy actually shrank in inflation-adjusted terms – by 8.67 percent. By contrast, America’s urban areas as a whole grew by 24.30 percent.

Census Bureau data show that the city’s population actually dropped more steeply from – 124,943 in 2000 to just over 99,000 in 2014. So in theory, there was more wealth to share in Flint. But in practice, it hasn’t worked out that way. Between 2000 and the Census Bureau’s estimated 2010-2014 average, median household income in the city fell by nearly 12 percent – and that’s before adjusting for inflation. No doubt a veritable and ongoing employment depression deserves much blame. During this period, the number of employed Flint residents cratered by 37.63 percent – from 45,885 to 28,618. And the poverty rate surged from 26.4 percent to 41.6 percent. That’s nearly triple the national rate in 2014 (14.8 percent).

Leading the way down in Flint has been manufacturing. Its real output (as also shown in that Commerce data base) plunged by 29.10 percent during this period, compared with 26.67 percent real manufacturing growth for all of the nation’s metropolitan economies. As a result, this sector shrank from more than 22 percent of the city’s economy after inflation to just over 17 percent. In U.S. metro areas as a whole, manufacturing stayed at somewhat over 11 percent of real gross product.

Flint’s manufacturing’s woes, in turn, overwhelmingly stem from the troubles of the American automobile industry. Flint is nothing less than the birthplace of General Motors, and has long been known as “Vehicle City.” Back in 1978, GM employed more than 80,000 Flint-area residents. Production figures are harder to come by – the Commerce Department doesn’t break out automotive output for Flint for most years precisely because it has been so GM-dominated, and therefore publishing the numbers would release proprietary data. But as of 2013, the automotive sector is recorded as representing nearly 71 percent of the Flint metropolitan area’s inflation-adjusted manufacturing production.

The GM employment footprint, however, had shrunk to some 8,000 by 2006, and as this time-line makes clear, the company has closed down many more and larger facilities in the area since the 1980s than its opened or expanded. Just as important, the rest of Flint’s economy didn’t fill in nearly enough of the resulting gap.

The entire private sector service providing complex in the city grew in real terms by only 5.71 percent – versus 30.31 percent for American metro areas as a whole. Flint’s hospital apparently couldn’t the city’s economy, either. In Flint, health care services expanded their output by only 16.76 percent after inflation between 2001 and 2014 – much less than half the nation-wide rate in cities (42 percent). And where services growth in Flint was strong – as in the information sector – it remained far too small to make a major difference.

Flint’s de-industrialization of course changed the city’s job mix, too – and not for the better. In 2000, according Census figures, manufacturing accounted for 23.2 percent of the jobs held by city residents. During the 2010-2014 period, this share sank to 14.1 percent. The rest of Flint’s major employing sectors fared much better relatively speaking – especially, it seems, the healthcare industry. Its supersector – what I’ve called the government-subsidized private sector – boosted its share of Flint employment from 23.5 percent to 27.9 percent during this period. But Flint’s biggest job loser – manufacturing – pays better than average wages. Except for that subsidized private sector, most of Flint’s biggest job winners pay below average wages.

As a result of the growth and job-related setbacks, Flint’s tax base shriveled. And the damage was hardly limited to individual taxpayers. According to the city’s 2015 financial report, “Property values within the City are believed to have hit the bottom, declining from $1.804 billion in 2002 to $1.192 in 2011 and further declining to $969.13 million in 2012.” Only “slight increases are projected over the next few years.”

Because de-industrialization isn’t responsible for all of Flint’s predicament, it’s way too early to say that the city is doomed to third world status. Other so-called Rust Belt municipalities have fared considerably better, no doubt in part because they weren’t so heavily invested in a single industry like Flint – and its much larger, also wheezing neighbor, Detroit. But because of manufacturing’s matchless record of creating middle class jobs for working class Americans, and because so many former manufacturing centers continue to struggle, expect de-industrialization’s impact to keep threatening Flint’s ability to deliver first world-level services, and its claim to first world status, for years to come.