At one time, Donald Trump's words sounded reassuring to Tommy Wolikow. Now more than a year later, they just torment him.
"Don't move, don't sell your house," the U.S. president urged a cheering crowd in Youngstown, Ohio, in July 2017, promising to resurrect the region's dwindling manufacturing jobs. "They're all coming back."
Wolikow, a 36-year-old father of three, was standing there listening, hopeful. The former General Motors quality control worker at the GM Lordstown Complex had been laid off months earlier, and bought a two-storey home for $110,000 US with his wife, Rochelle, located just three kilometres from the factory. He was hoping to soon return to work.
Wolikow voted for Trump in 2016, inspired by his pledge to reinvigorate the manufacturing economy. He was a believer. So when Trump encouraged supporters not to sell their homes, to trust his economic stewardship, Wolikow accepted it.
But as 14,000 layoffs were announced by GM on Monday, it became clear that Trump has not lived up to being the manufacturing messiah he claimed to be.
Among other factors, many economists are faulting his trade policy and confirming their doubts that a tax-reform package benefiting corporations would save factory workers.
After nine years at GM, Trump's inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2017, turned out to be Wolikow's last day on the job. Once a diehard Trump supporter, Wolikow's faith has waned. Over the last two years, he has seen only job losses in Ohio — including both his and Rochelle's, who was a GM employee on the door line at the Lordstown plant.
"The information we got is devastating," he said about the new layoffs and GM's plan to idle five factories in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland and Oshawa, Ont.
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