Auto Workers for Trump founder Brian Pannebecker appeared on Fox Business Thursday and said he gives credit to President Donald Trump for boosting a manufacturing base that the Obama administration abandoned.
During former President Barack Obama’s presidency, the manufacturing sector experienced a net loss of 303,000 jobs. During the first two years of Trump’s first term, however, the U.S. manufacturing sector added approximately 462,000 jobs before it had losses that resulted in a net decrease. During an appearance on “The Evening Edit,” Pannebecker said that Obama focused on creating a service-based economy but at the cost of America’s manufacturing prowess.
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“He had given up on America. He wanted us to become a service-based economy. He had given up on us having a manufacturing base. Well, that’s a national security issue. If we can’t build military vehicles in our own country, we have to rely on other countries to build things for us,” Pannebecker said.
“We are no longer a powerful nation. So Barack Obama basically had given up on America. When he said he was going to fundamentally change America, he was not lying. He did fundamentally try to change it,” Pannebecker added. “Donald Trump said ‘No, we’re not going to allow this to happen. I’m going to stand up and fight for the men and women who do these jobs every day.’ There’s a reason why the Midwest was called the Rust Belt,” Pannebecker added. “Because for 30 or 40 years, the people who sat in the Oval Office had given up on the American worker. Donald Trump hasn’t. He’s going to stand up and fight for us, just like when he got up off that stage after he’d been shot and pumped his fist in the air and said, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ We know he’s going to fight for us, and that’s why we support him.”
This week, a Rust Belt worker named Robert also praised Trump and his reciprocal tariffs, saying that, after years of economic neglect, they make his base feel heard and recognized. He said to journalist Mark Halperin that Trump’s actions resonate deeply with voters in swing states, where many have witnessed the decline of local industries.
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“And I think that what everybody is forgetting is the fact that President Trump is speaking to his base in every swing state from where we are in Pennsylvania to Wisconsin to Michigan when the auto worker was there and said, ‘You know, I have seen, over my lifetime, every factory, every plant, every mill closed down to the extent whereby he’s making all sorts of noise,” Robert told Halperin on “2WAY TONIGHT.”
Trump said that the imposition of tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts aims to protect the auto industry, which he says has been negatively impacted by high levels of imports. The White House said that these measures are essential to counter unjust trade practices and bolster the U.S. automobile sector.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
