My mother's side of the family is from Erie, Pennsylvania. It was once a booming manufacturing city on the Great Lakes. For about a century beginning in the late 19th century, my family had called this city their home. When I discovered a family reunion invitation list from the 1930's (containing addresses of the entire extended family), I noticed that everyone invited had an Erie address. This was shocking to me because the majority of my mom's family currently lives scattered throughout the country. Why did this happen?
Over the summer, I visited my Nana who still lives in Erie. For the first time in my life, I noticed the decaying quality of the roads and infrastructure as I was driving around. The buildings that once housed the companies that employed my family were abandoned and left for a slow, painful destruction. With the disappearance of industrial strongholds from the Great Lakes region, the jobs have evaporated as well.
The fact that Pennsylvania made a significant flip in the last election could be attributed to the fact of Trump's strong position on tariffs intended to strengthen our manufacturing sector of the economy. This could be evidence of the residents of Erie preferring the gains from the larger producer surplus rectangle over the losses experienced in the small triangles of DWL in our tariff model. The people of Erie and the rest of rural PA want their cities and towns to be vibrant once again. After experiencing the rust belt in my mom's hometown, I can understand why Erie County switched from a democratic majority in 2012 to securing a majority for Donald Trump with trade protections in mind. I believe that this happened throughout the state of Pennsylvania, which had a part in finally breaking down the "Blue Wall"
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