Why did the Rust Belt really lose its manufacturing base? Middlebury College political scientist Gary Winslett has a provocative answer: It wasn’t China or robots. It was Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Winslett argued that the South’s pro-growth policies—not foreign competition or automation—were the real drivers behind the industrial shift. That makes for an uncomfortable narrative in a political environment where both parties have a stake in telling more convenient stories about trade and globalization.
Winslett explains how factors like “right to work” laws, housing construction, regulatory efficiency, and immigration made the South more attractive to manufacturers. The conversation moves beyond nostalgia for lost factories and asks whether the American dream now lies in places like Nashville and Raleigh—and whether we’re too busy looking backward to notice.
Sources Referenced:
Men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs. I’m telling you, white Americans will love working in factories again. Making things, in the image and likeness of God the Maker.
— MILO (@Nero) April 4, 2025
Lutnick: It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here and your grandkids work here pic.twitter.com/dRq9aDfdgH
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 3, 2025
Chapters:
- 00:00 What really happened to Rust Belt jobs?
- 05:11 The politics of the manufacturing decline
- 10:22 Nostalgia and the rise of southern manufacturing
- 15:20 Unionization, right to work, and labor policy
- 20:43 How immigration and housing fueled southern growth
- 26:02 Why the Rust Belt didn’t adapt
- 32:21 Permitting, regulation, and business friendliness
- 38:36 Trade deficits and service exports
- 44:05 The myth of manufacturing as America’s future
- 50:01 Remote work and the class divide
- 56:26 Upward mobility and bipartisan economic failure
