By TARA YOKOPENIC Westmoreland Democratic Party Chairperson
Four years ago, candidate Donald Trump arrived in Monessen to lay out his jobs plan. He made a lot of big promises — as if he could wave a magic wand and we would suddenly have favorable trade deals, and manufacturing jobs would boom again in our region. But four years later, we’re worse off than ever before. President Trump has given us a lot of chaos and a lot of angry Tweets, but he hasn’t given us leadership, let alone those good-paying union jobs we need.
He turned out to be another politician who is more interested in playing politics with our livelihoods than actually helping the working families of our region. As soon as he got to Washington, he forgot about us and spent all of his time helping himself and his wealthy friends. And his record proves it.
Trump started a trade war with China without a real plan and we’re losing, badly. His tariffs caused prices to go up. The average family lost $1,200 a year. His trade war cost our nation 300,000 jobs. That’s 300,000 of our countrymen and women who had to go home and deliver the bad news to their family — that they lost their way to put food on the table. The industries that were hit the hardest? Manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and retail. Under Trump, even before the coronavirus pandemic, there were fewer manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania than there were under the Obama-Biden administration. In the fall of 2019, manufacturing held its smallest share of the U.S. economy in 72 years. So much for a manufacturing boom. And since the coronavirus pandemic, things have gotten far worse. Donald Trump did not create the virus, but his lack of leadership has cost our region, our commonwealth and our nation dearly. According to the latest numbers from the Department of Labor, 12.9 million jobs and 740,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost because of COVID-19. Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate is two-and-one-half times what it was when Trump took office. Our communities are hurting, and Donald Trump still doesn’t have a plan to help. There’s one group that he has made sure got assistance — his wealthy donors. The taxpayer-funded PPP loans were supposed to help small businesses make it through this crisis — but $273 million in PPP loans conveniently ended up in the hands of Trump associates. $1 billion found its way to big corporations that are traded on Wall Street rather than the mom and pop businesses on Main Street. And Trump’s top economic adviser admitted during a July tenth Fox News interview that this was a result of how the program was designed. Meanwhile, Trump’s continued mismanagement of the crisis has left cases rising, 180,000 Americans dead, and sadly, no end in sight. We can’t build our economy back until the spread of the virus is under control, but Trump would rather pretend the virus is going to “disappear” than come up with a national testing or contact tracing strategy. Compare his record to the plans of Joe Biden. Joe has dedicated his life of public service to lifting up working families, and he has a detailed plan to build our economy back better than ever before — and to cut working families in on the deal with good union jobs. He knows that we can only defeat the virus by leading with science and listening to health experts. Joe is a leader who can navigate our country out of a crisis — he’s done it before and he’ll do it again. Donald Trump has given us four years of chaos, erratic policies and failed leadership. He has broken his promises to communities like Monessen, Latrobe and all of Westmoreland County. And today he’s going to give us more of the same. There’s only one way that we can get our nation back on track: by electing Joe Biden as our next president.