Trump’s promise of a manufacturing boom has yet to materialize — putting these key battleground states up for grabs in 2020

President Donald Trump’s promise to bring back manufacturing jobs in a huge way played a major role in the success he enjoyed in the Rust Belt in 2016. Trump carried Pennsylvania and Michigan, two Rust Belt states a Republican hadn’t won in a presidential race since President George H.W. Bush in 1988, as well as Wisconsin, which hadn’t gone for a GOP presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan’s landslide 1984 reelection victory. But a report by Michael Tackett for the New York Times describes Trump’s promise of a renaissance in U.S.-based manufacturing jobs as a campaign promise unfulfilled.

Tackett reports that from January 2017 to December 2018, the United States lost 9 percent of its manufacturing jobs. Citing analysis by the Brookings Institution, Tackett takes a look at counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — all of which are Obama-Trump states, meaning they were won by President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but rejected Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In Wisconsin, Tackett reports, ten counties that Trump won in 2016 have since lost manufacturing jobs. The news isn’t much better in Pennsylvania, which in 2018, lost manufacturing jobs in eight counties that Trump carried, according to Tackett.

Tackett also notes that manufacturing employment in 2018 fell by 26 percent in Fulton County, Pennsylvania and by 9 percent in Eaton County, Michigan.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, directed the analysis that Tackett cites. And Tackett quotes Muro as saying of Michigan, “to the extent that economic realities have the power to alter voting behavior, the trends are pointing in one direction in Michigan in a lot of these counties.”