Two candidates, two narratives, three days apart.
Presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump brought their messages to the midstate over the last week.
Both agree that the country has hemorrhaged jobs. But they have distinct visions for bringing jobs back to America and Pennsylvania.
Republican Trump plans to restore America’s economy by bringing back manufacturing, mining and other industrial work that he says has been lost through offshoring and excessive regulation.
Democrat Clinton says there’s no returning to the economy of old, and the way forward is through new technology and new training.
Along the way, both left some things unsaid, and said some things that didn’t quite add up.
Clinton: ‘Those days are over’
Clinton visited Harrisburg on July 29, appearing outside Harrisburg’s Broad Street Market for about 30 minutes. One of her first jabs at Trump’s bring-jobs-home policy was to attack the New York businessman for having some of his self-branded consumer products made overseas.
“He doesn’t make a single thing in America,” Clinton said.
That, it turns out, doesn’t quite pass a fact check. Many of Trump’s products are made elsewhere. But as politifact.com and other researchers have found, some of Trump’s goods — suits, for example — are made in this country.
Clinton also knocked Trump’s pledge to revive traditional manufacturing and industrial jobs — as in Scranton two days earlier, where he talked about reviving the region’s coal industry, which died out more than a half century ago.
“Those days are over,” Clinton said. “We need to prepare people for the jobs that will be here.”
Those jobs, she added, include modern manufacturing positions that can be difficult to fill due to a lack of qualified candidates.
Clinton said her job-creation strategies include investing in infrastructure and clean-energy technology, as well as expanding access to high-speed Internet service for more Americans, schoolchildren in particular.
She also says the country must “double-down” on education and training — a message advocates of American manufacturing, such as those in the reshoring movement, also have been making, calling for more apprenticeship and technical training programs.
Trump: End ‘bad trade deals’
The real estate mogul and television personality greeted crowds on Aug. 1, taking the stage at the Cumberland Valley High School gym in Silver Spring Township. His attacks on Clinton’s economic plans focused less on what she has said — he never addressed the question of where his products are made — and more on what her husband has done.
During his 64-minute speech, Trump laid the blame for American job losses in recent years at the feet of Hillary and Bill Clinton, citing the former president’s support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, during Clinton’s presidency.
Initial negotiations for the trilateral agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico began under the administration of Republican George H.W. Bush, with Clinton signing off on the final treaty in 1993.
NAFTA “is a horrible deal,” Trump told a loud, enthusiastic crowd.
The problem with free trade, he said, is that “political hacks,” not intelligent people, negotiate deals.
Under a Trump administration, there would be “no more bad trade deals.” Trump said, suggesting he would do more “one-on-one” negotiating and including 30-day opt-out clauses for pacts that turn out to be bad for America.
The centerpiece of Trump’s economic message resembled one he referenced during an April rally at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg: Namely, that companies that offshore manufacturing jobs will face a 35 percent duty on goods brought into the country for sale.
Again referencing NAFTA, Trump said Pennsylvania and the Harrisburg region have lost one in three manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was signed.
On the numbers, he’s not far off. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics records cited by consumer watchdog group Public Citizen show that the state lost about 35 percent of its manufacturing jobs, or 308,432 positions, between 1994 and 2015.
Trump also said he has a list of companies that have moved jobs out of the state — mostly to Mexico, he said — but did not name them, calling the list “so terrible” he would not enumerate it.
The only Pennsylvania company he referenced by name was The Hershey Co., and only after someone in the audience shouted a question about the Dauphin County candymaker, which was the subject of a recently-rebuffed takeover attempt by Illinois-based Mondelez International.
Trump replied that he understands Hershey has “closed divisions.” Hershey has expanded operations in Mexico and overseas. The company still employs about 6,000 people in the midstate.
“We are going to make great, magnificent trade deals … to bring jobs back — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and everywhere they have been lost,” Trump said.
