It might have seemed politically safe for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, during a campaign rally in Pittsburgh this week, to commit to “bringing back” the steel and coal industries.
After all, he was here — in the Steel City, the City of Bridges, the home turf of Steely McBeam, the square-jawed Steelers mascot sporting a 5 o’clock shadow from a long day in the mills, lumbering around with a beam of steel under arm.
Yet the comment struck a nerve. On one hand, it generated mockery by those who viewed the comment as tone-deaf to how the Pittsburgh region has diversified in areas of health care, education and technology since the collapse of steel in the 1980s.
At the same time, it resonated with those laid off from mines, coal-fired power plants and steel operations — and clearly with Mr. Trump’s base of voters who have propelled him to a 16-point lead in the run-up to Pennsylvania’s April 26 primary, according to the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
The divide suggests somewhat of an ongoing economic identity crisis in the region, said Larry Schweiger, chief executive officer for PennFuture, a Harrisburg-based group that advocates for environmental policy changes.
“I think there’s a struggle going on between the new Pittsburgh and the old Pittsburgh — but I think the battle is already over,” Mr. Schweiger said. “I personally do not see coal ever coming back. [Natural] gas has won that fight and the next fight is wind and solar,” referring to the low price of natural gas and the growing competitiveness of renewable energy.
Still, it’s too easy to dismiss the power that steel and coal still hold in the region.
“Manufacturing and steel is in the DNA of the people of this region,” said Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Sen. John Heinz History Center in the Strip District. Amid all the reinvention, Mr. Masich said, “I still think there’s a place for the steel industry in the United States ... If there were a level playing field internationally, I think U.S. steel could still be competitive.”
Of course, Mr. Masich acknowledged, “We’re never going to return to 1950.”
Though both the coal and steel industries took major hits in decades past, they have also experienced new declines in recent years — hits that have reverberated in outlying parts of the Pittsburgh region. In testimony to Congress on Thursday, Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, blamed unfair trade for the layoff notices sent to 13,500 workers in the steel industry.
Last week, Pittsburgh-based giant U.S. Steel let go a quarter of its nonunion workforce.
“This is an employment crisis,” Mr. Gerard said. He called on Congress to enact measures that restrain cheaply priced imports of steel from China, which are competing with domestically produced steel.
“The public is losing confidence in our trade laws, our trade agreement and in trade institutions,” he said. “They’re right to lose that confidence.”
As the urban areas of Pittsburgh have turned to “eds and meds,” more rural parts of southwestern Pennsylvania dependent on employment in mines and mills have become disenfranchised, leaving an opening for presidential candidates like Mr. Trump, along with Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, to make gains.
The loss in confidence is so powerful that it has worried left-leaning labor groups, which normally count on the Pittsburgh area for support. As Mr. Trump gained popularity in recent months, Working America, the nonunion affiliate of the AFL-CIO labor federation, decided to survey blue-collar areas of Pittsburgh and Cleveland on why the candidate appealed to them.
Released in January, the survey showed that blue-collar voters around Pittsburgh tended to favor Mr. Trump over other candidates — but that more than half were undecided. In front-door conversations, the group found voters were drawn to Mr. Trump for his personality and because he “says what he thinks,” said Jenn Jannon-Fischer, national campaigns director for Working America.
Ms. Jannon-Fischer, who lives in Pittsburgh, said she “can understand the appeal of Trump saying we’re bringing the steel mills back and how that resonates with people.” But, she added, “That’s just not the reality anymore.”
Still, it’s possible for Pittsburgh to honor its past and also transition toward a better future, she said.
“It’s possible to be of both minds about this,” she said. “I think a lot of people in Western Pennsylvania feel proud about where Pittsburgh is headed.”
PennFuture’s Mr. Schweiger remembers his grandmother’s stories of advocating to clean up Pittsburgh’s infamous black smoke in the 1950s. He pointed out Pittsburgh still today ranks among the most polluted cities in America, and that the coal and steel industries are “the single most important thing holding us back” with regard to air quality.
In January, PennFuture sued U.S. Steel over violations of federal clean air regulations at its Clairton Works plant.
“It’s one of the very, very few Rust Belt cities that has completely reinvented itself, I don’t think Pittsburghers appreciate that” as much as they should, Mr. Schweiger said.
Bill Flanagan, chief corporate relations officer for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, agreed. Pittsburgh was one of the few U.S. cities to bounce back from the recession, thanks to its diversified economy that is led by the financial industry.
But the appeals to steel and coal roots are powerful, Mr. Flanagan said, partly because the industries haven’t left. They’ve modernized to operate more efficiently.
In fact, much of what’s written or said about Pittsburgh “downplays the role manufacturing still plays in our economy,” he said. “The reality is that manufacturing, steel, energy — they’re all still part of what’s been created here.”
Daniel Moore: dmoore@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2743 and Twitter @PGdanielmoore.
First Published: April 16, 2016, 4:47 a.m.
