AFP, Indianapolis :
Duane Oreskovic is disappointed in Donald Trump.
In 2016, he voted for the brash businessman in the hopes that the take-no-prisoners Republican would save his job at a Carrier furnace-making factory in the midwestern US city of Indianapolis.
Now, as Trump’s first anniversary in office approaches, Oreskovic is unemployed.
“When President Trump came here and promised to save my job, I believed him-myself and a lot of other people,” Oreskovic said last week at a rally organized by a progressive political group in a restaurant near the plant.
“I was wrong. We were all wrong,” he said.
Of the many factors leading to Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016, one was the support the real estate mogul received from blue-collar workers in manufacturing towns across America’s “Rust Belt.”
Against the odds, Trump-the Manhattanite with a silver spoon upbringing — captivated voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, where factories have been closing for decades and middle class wages disappearing.
But in Indiana, at least some workers are questioning their support of the president or have outright cast him aside, as the 2018 midterm elections loom, with control of Congress at stake.
Weeks before being sworn into office, Trump personally intervened in the fate of Carrier, making a $7 million tax incentive deal to keep the plant from moving to Mexico, and promising 1,100 jobs would be saved and more created.
A year on, there have been more than 500 layoffs at the Carrier plant alone. Other plants nearby have closed up or cut jobs.
Trump’s deal with Carrier did save approximately 800 assembly line jobs.
But workers here expected more, Oreskovic says.
Duane Oreskovic is disappointed in Donald Trump.
In 2016, he voted for the brash businessman in the hopes that the take-no-prisoners Republican would save his job at a Carrier furnace-making factory in the midwestern US city of Indianapolis.
Now, as Trump’s first anniversary in office approaches, Oreskovic is unemployed.
“When President Trump came here and promised to save my job, I believed him-myself and a lot of other people,” Oreskovic said last week at a rally organized by a progressive political group in a restaurant near the plant.
“I was wrong. We were all wrong,” he said.
Of the many factors leading to Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016, one was the support the real estate mogul received from blue-collar workers in manufacturing towns across America’s “Rust Belt.”
Against the odds, Trump-the Manhattanite with a silver spoon upbringing — captivated voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, where factories have been closing for decades and middle class wages disappearing.
But in Indiana, at least some workers are questioning their support of the president or have outright cast him aside, as the 2018 midterm elections loom, with control of Congress at stake.
Weeks before being sworn into office, Trump personally intervened in the fate of Carrier, making a $7 million tax incentive deal to keep the plant from moving to Mexico, and promising 1,100 jobs would be saved and more created.
A year on, there have been more than 500 layoffs at the Carrier plant alone. Other plants nearby have closed up or cut jobs.
Trump’s deal with Carrier did save approximately 800 assembly line jobs.
But workers here expected more, Oreskovic says.
