West Virginia, USA: Trump promises to recreate the industry here.
Every weekday morning, Curtis Scriptchfield, 29, gets up in the morning. The job as a machine operator at the factory calls.
He doesn’t take it for granted.
During his upbringing, he was drawn to the drugs, as so many of his classmates in the mountains in West Virginia.
– I was twelve or thirteen. Tested everything I came across. That’s just the way it was, in the environment where I grew up, he says.
He managed to get away from the drugs when he became a father as a 20-year-old. For several years he was the sole custodian.
– We stayed at a campsite until I found this house three years ago. Now my daughter with me is on the weekends and with her mother on weekdays when I work.
There are many sorts Trump voters, even in very prosperous areas, but Curtis Scritchfield belongs to what we usually describe as the voter base.
A white male worker in the US inland.
In the presidential election in November last year, seven out of ten voters voted in West Virginia on Trump. The state is one of the Republican’s absolute strongest brackets. It is also a symbol of how the working class in the United States has been moving right in recent decades.
Nevertheless, the Democrats had a clear base in the state until the turn of the millennium. The strong bands for the trade union movement weighed heavily. The pattern was broken with Republican George W Bush’s election victory in 2000.
Support for the party has continued Up up since Trump made an entrance in American top politics, with his promises to squeeze to China and Mexico and restore American manufacturing and recreate American jobs.
– I will be the most amazing president of the job that God has ever created, read the message from Trump when he launched his first presidential campaign ten years ago.
Now he is trying to fulfill the promise through a large -scale trade war.
Factory worker Curtis Scritchfield has nothing to object to the decisions in the White House.
– I’m glad it’s Trump sitting there now. And all other countries have tariffs so I can’t see why we can’t have them too, he says.
He just needs to throw A glance across the street to find that something needs to happen in West Virginia. There is the metal manufacturer Novelis, in an over 100 year old factory room. A few days ago, the nearly 200 workers were told that the facility should be closed.
It was another hard blow to West Virginia’s green mountains and valleys.
– This is a poor part of the United States. It is quite forgotten, says Curtis Scritchfield.
The symbol of Fairmont testifies to the city’s heyday.
It is a wheat freckle filled with rods of strong sausage, a so -called pepperoni role. Mackan was created by an Italian immigrant at the Bakery County Club nearly 100 years ago as the perfect lunch bag for the men who would go into the coal mine.
– They worked for 12-14 hours at a time in the underground. They went down when it was dark and they came up when it was dark again. And when their wives were packing the food box, this became an economic alternative, says Shanna Miller, which we meet in the bakery.
She grew up in Fairmont in the 70s.
– In the past, this was the city where the jobs were. We had the mines and lots of companies. But then somewhere around the 80s and 90s everything started to collapse, she says.
I believe in Trump. He is tough and raw bark.
Shanna Miller supports Trump. As so often with the supporters, there is a basic confidence that he is doing the right thing in the trade war.
– I don’t think there is an answer to what happened to Fairmont. There have been negligence. Greed. Disinformation. Can we fix it overnight? No, it’s not possible. But I believe in Trump. He is tough and raw bark. He doesn’t make everything sound like a beautiful fairy tale, as Obama did, she says.
It is as if the election campaign in the United States has begun during Trump’s first intense months in power. In the capital Washington, where the vast majority support the Democrats, the gardens are filled with new protest signs against the president and his allied Elon Musk.
In Fairmont we only see trump symbols.
– I never saw a decal for Biden in West Virginia. Only in South Carolina when I visited the islands there, says Curtis Scritchfield.
Chick’s Bargain Center, a Divers business along one of the large streets, sells caps and banners. The most popular represents Trump as the action hero Rambo with a machine gun in his hand.
– I think Trump’s ego is so big that he will do the right thing. Because he wants to be one of the foremost presidents ever, says owner Rocky Cikovich.
The shop assistant Tammy – who does not want to give his last name – thinks Trump does exactly what he has promised.
– Now he is trying to make sure the factories come back. Then it becomes a job for all of us. But you have to give the man some time. He has only been running for a couple of months, she says.
Not everyone is as convinced. According to opinion polls, customs is Trump’s weakest point. In a new survey from the news agency AP and the Chicago Institute Norc, six out of ten state that they are against the trade war and the president’s way of managing the economy.
Even in Fairmont in West Virginia is raised critical roots.
The retired carpenter Bennie Kyle, a black man in his 70s, thinks that everything has only become more expensive in recent months.
– It does not affect rich people. But we who are to cope with small incomes may suffer. And this is one of the poorest places in the entire United States, he says.
He believes that support for Trump is starting to fail,
– Some may have thought that Trump’s politics would just hit black and brown people. But now everyone is affected. People see that their health care is in danger and that it will not be as he promised with food prices and gasoline, he says.
In the house next door Curtis Scritchfield’s garden is a small gaming hall. There we meet one of Trump’s most angry critics in Fairmont.
Maggie Miller, 78, cannot withstand the president.
– He tries to get other countries to accept anything just because he is Trump.
Her own husband is a trump supporter. The spouses have stopped talking politics. It usually happens when people think differently in the United States.
But the residents of Fairmont share concerns about what will happen after all factory closures.
– It has only been done. So many have moved from here. I actually don’t know what to do about it. Spread river dust over everything and believe that it will grow roses? I am afraid that it has gone so far that you cannot reverse the development, says Maggie Miller.
She thinks she hears how part of the acquaintance circle is starting to question Trump.
– Mainly the women. They say they are not sure that he is a good person. But then they follow their men anyway, she says.
Neighbor Curtis Scritchfield insures That he has no problem talking to dissent. One of his brothers is Democrat.
– He thinks Trump is lying about everything. But we are discussing. It’s fun, he says.
He doesn’t think Trump is flawless. He does not like the threats to Greenland and Canada at all.
« That is such a bullshit that Trump is doing, he would really need to be more professional, » he says.
What does he hope if he looks ten years ahead? The answer comes quickly.
– I’m happy if I’m alive.
Read more about the world’s reactions to the trade tariffs:
France: Conjacifier is threatened by Trump’s customs – « Can you drink more brandy in Sweden? »
Canada: Fluent gold ends in the middle of Trump’s customs war
Lebanon: When Sweden begins to boycott the United States, the Middle East has swung
Lesotho: the country « that no one has heard of » received the world’s highest customs by Trump
Vietnam: Customs becomes a shock: « You lose your breath »
Sweden: More than every other shirt from Borås suffer from the Customs War
