Via the AP: A gut punch in Ohio: Nearly 1,400 laid off at truck factory just days before Trump rally.
At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.
The layoffs — occurring just three days before President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area.
[…]
Americans increasingly blame Trump for the high cost of living with just 17% approving of his handling of the issue. Trump has largely sneered at concerns about affordability, but he has promised to give people $5,000 checks if Republicans win the House and Senate next month — something Bos said he found offensive.
“It feels like a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we’re all ignorant,” Bos said.
[…]
His broad tariffs failed to boost demand and the plant’s former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility. And Trump’s major legislative achievement — the One Big Beautiful Bill — contributed little to people’s take-home pay, even as it temporarily stripped taxes from tips and overtime.
“We weren’t getting a lot of overtime because of the economy,” said Marianne Donnelly, who drove a forklift at the factory. “There just wasn’t any to be had, very little to be had.”
Meanwhile, costs have kept climbing. Donnelly said she buys marked-down beef, pork and chicken and stows them in her freezer. She canceled her subscriptions to The Columbus Dispatch and The Washington Post newspapers, along with some streaming services.
Given that the story’s dateline location is “Springfield, Ohio,” I guess that they can all rest assured that, at a minimum, there is less dog and cat eating going on.
And no irony detected:
Laid-off workers like Donnelly say they expect to be rehired in six to 12 months by Roshel, a Canadian manufacturer of armored vehicles that is buying the plant. Roshel said in a statement that it’s “working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process.”
