The writer is senior fellow non-resident at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

Washington thinks Beijing cheats at trade. Those six words are reshaping the global order, but do they matter to ordinary folks in the US? The answer is both yes and no.

This summer, I drove from New York to San Francisco, via Yellowstone, and then back to New York via New Orleans. That’s around 8500 miles and, wherever I could along the way, I spoke to Americans about the country, its election and its path. 

Of course, my route included the rust belt — America’s former industrial heartland, lost to trade and offshoring. The moniker ‘rust’ is visual. I saw abandoned machinery, empty factories, poor roads and broken infrastructure. Sights like these account for the protectionist policies of Donald Trump. He thought China’s “unfair” trade practices, such as domestic subsidies and wage suppression, had reached into the US and pulled its factories down. President Joe Biden agrees, and so, it seems, does vice president and democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The rust belt stretches roughly from Scranton, Pennsylvania in the east, to Iowa out in the west. It includes Ohio, Michigan, and parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Notably, three of them — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — are swing states. 

Nobody I spoke to in the rust belt used the word ‘tariff’, or mentioned Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act (which lets the president impose tariffs). However, everyone was an amateur economist and had thoughts on the country’s financial health.

Here’s the other thing: I did not see a single Kamala Harris sign across the whole rust belt.

Punxsutawney to Springfield

I can report that Scranton is doing okay — wander down Biden Street and you’ll see young people, lively coffee shops and such. But in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, people are glum. There’s a very large Trump mural on display and two old ladies told me the town “just ain’t what it used to be”. Punxsutawney peaked, it seems, as the setting of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day in the early 1990s. Unlike his character, however, it’s still waiting for a second or third chance at life. 

In Ohio and Indiana, the concerns I heard from locals — and remember, this was a limited sample — were generic grumbles about prices and the economy. The topic of migrants came up. Americans talk about the effects of trade — of supply chain snarls and lost output — but don’t always understand the cause of their woe. 

Meanwhile in Springfield, Illinois, conversations were again about a disappointing economy. That widespread sentiment contradicts the numbers. US gross domestic product is growing at 3%, inflation is down to 2.5%, unemployment sits at 4.1% and there’s been a long-awaited interest rate cut. Still, rust belters are annoyed with the economy. They blame Mr Biden for this more than anyone else, and so they’re displaying their colossal Trump signs. 

In fairness, the US has lost millions of manufacturing jobs since the early 1990s. However, Mr Biden has tried to reverse course via industrial policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act. Through these measures, he has shown commitment to preventing a ‘Rust Belt 2.0’. He also wants to block a flood of cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EV) imports. Both he and Mr Trump agree on 100% tariffs on those cars. But does it matter? Nobody I spoke with in the rust belt wanted an EV. It’s gas, and Trump, all the way. 

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In lockstep

Of course, this isn’t to say that Ms Harris has no voters in the rust belt — it just means that they’re quiet.

What is clear is that, ahead of the election, rust belters have their minds on economics. Washington thinks Beijing cheats at trade; while many Americans seem to agree, Mr Biden’s efforts at a remedy don’t seem to have cut through, despite the fact that he’s gone further on restricting trade with China than Mr Trump did.

A Harris administration would likely continue a technocratic trade squeeze on Beijing. A Trump administration would be chaotic and, again, focus on tariffs. Only time will tell which approach the rust belt prefers, but it’s fascinating that, at this polarised time, Americans are in lockstep on one thing: getting tougher on Beijing.

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