Donnie Blatt is the director of United Steelworkers District 1. It is based in Columbus.
The federal government committed to helping Zanesville build a more prosperous future when it announced a $57 million grant last year to modernize the O-I Glass plant, one of the city’s biggest employers for more than a century.
O-I intended to use the funds to rebuild a furnace with groundbreaking technology, ensuring the aging plant’s competitiveness in a tough global market. The project would have supported new jobs and provided long-term security to the hundreds of workers, members of the United Steelworkers, already employed there.
A kick in the gut
All of Zanesville stood to benefit from the project, given the workers’ community activism and support for the civic groups that make this part of Ohio a great place to live.
Then the Trump administration pulled the rug out from under us.
It arbitrarily killed this grant and support for hundreds of other transformative industrial projects across the country, delivering a kick in the gut to manufacturing communities constantly at risk of being hollowed out by unfair trade, offshoring and corporate greed.
Trump clawed back the grants simply because they occurred during the Biden presidency and boosted the clean-energy goals he despises. His callousness doubly stings because it was the working people in Zanesville and around the country who forged these once-in-a-generation opportunities that he ripped away from us.
A fighter and an adversary
USW members worked with neighbors, employers and members of Congress to push through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, two laws that spurred growth and made grants like the one at O-I available in the first place.
We put on a multi-state bus tour highlighting the need for modern infrastructure and for advanced manufacturing in glass as well as in batteries, cement, tires, steel and numerous other industries. We made phone calls, wrote emails and pounded the halls of the U.S. Capitol to rally support for this legislation, which quickly began creating jobs and primed America for a new era of prosperity.
No one proved more instrumental in these victories than Sherrod Brown, the former U.S. senator from Ohio who fought alongside working families for years before losing his reelection bid in the backsliding that placed Trump and other anti-worker Republicans into office.
Just as we expected, Brown’s successor — Senator Bernie Moreno — works against us.
He voted for a bill that enabled the Trump administration to eliminate some of the manufacturing grants, cutting off a path forward for workers in Zanesville and other communities.
A rug was pulled from beneath Zanesville’s feet
USW members at the local O-I plant, including multiple members of some families, make 365 million bottles for wine and spirits every year. Their commitment to quality and innovation continues to fuel the plant’s success after more than a century, but unfairly traded imports from countries like China, Mexico and Chile pose a constant threat.
We viewed the grant as a game-changer.
It would have enabled workers to confront trade cheaters and other challenges with a state-of-the-art furnace providing the upgrades needed to lead the industry into the future.
Now we’re left scrambling to find another way and wondering whether political whipsawing will kneecap future improvement plans as well.
Companies willing to undertake pioneering projects like these need to be able to trust the federal government when it pledges funding or other buy-in.
Abandoned promises deter innovation, discourage investment and inject chaos into the economy. They put communities like Zanesville at greater risk.
Rebuild what was snatched away
We can already see the damage Trump inflicted. Instead of adding manufacturing jobs, we lost 108,000 of them across the country last year, depriving workers of the good wages and benefits essential to navigating the nation’s affordability crisis.
There’s no good reason for any of this.
Working people want leaders who take real steps to build domestic manufacturing and collaborate with us to get the job done.
It’s time for Trump and the Republicans in Congress to bring back the grants they cut.
That’s an essential first step in restoring the government’s credibility, stimulating the economy and standing with working people.
Donnie Blatt, the director of United Steelworkers (USW) District 1, leads tens of thousands of USW members across numerous industries in Ohio. District 1 is based in Columbus.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Moreno illogically helped Trump sucker punched this Ohio city. | Opinion
Reporting by Donnie Blatt, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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