Sam Fleming and Patti Waldmeir write at the Financial Times:
Nelson Westrick says he won the middle class lottery when he clinched a job at one of the US’s big three automakers two decades ago, armed with a high school diploma.
Now the union member fears poor trade deals and manufacturing decline have pushed his lifestyle — a home in suburbia with two cars in the garage — beyond the reach of the next generation of blue-collar workers. The one-time Barack Obama supporter is turning to Donald Trump for answers.
“That American dream is leaving. It is leaving fast,” said Mr Westrick, 40, relaxing after his shift at Ford Motor Co near the small swimming pool in his backyard in a leafy street in Macomb County, Michigan. “We are doing all right but I have had the same job for 20 years. Younger guys coming up are not in the same boat. They are hurting.”
Macomb County, where Mr Westrick lives and works, is the spiritual home of the unionised manufacturing workers who ditched the Democrats and helped propel Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. Mr Trump, who chose Detroit for a speech on Monday in which he was due to unveil his economic policies, is now attempting to achieve a repeat performance.The region is pivotal to Mr Trump’s hopes of winning over Midwestern blue states in the presidential election in November by appealing to white, working-class men to turn out for him in large numbers.
You can read the rest of the story here.
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