Backdrop to Trump’s speech: The social disaster in Kenosha, Wisconsin
By
Christopher Davion
19 April 2017
President Trump chose Kenosha, Wisconsin for the location Tuesday to sign his “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, which restricts temporary visas for workers from other countries and mandates the use of US-made goods in federal projects. As he has done in similar stage-managed affairs, Trump promoted economic nationalism, the mass deportation of immigrants and the lifting of virtually all limitations on corporate profitmaking as a boon to American workers.
But the city of Kenosha and the entire southeastern corner of Wisconsin, like so many other regions in America’s Rust Belt, proves the exact opposite. The city of close to 100,000 residents, on the coast of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, has been devastated by decades of deindustrialization, the closure of automobile and other manufacturing plants, and mass layoffs.
Signifying its transformation over the last four decades, Kenosha’s largest employer is now Amazon, with 3,000 warehouse workers earning barely enough to live.
This was the result, not of immigrants or “unfair trade deals” with China and Mexico, but the ruthless operations of the capitalist profit system overseen by Democrats and Republicans alike. This assault on the working class was aided and abetted by trade unions like the United Auto Workers and Teamsters, which promoted “Buy American” campaigns even as they colluded with the corporate bosses to slash jobs and wages.
It is symbolic that Trump chose the headquarters of Snap-On Tools to deliver his nationalist rant. In 2003, Snap-On closed its tool manufacturing plant in Kenosha, laying off 290 workers as part of a two-year companywide layoff of nearly…