'Greatly imperiled': Expert warns Trump policies backfiring on Midwest towns

A central plank of President Donald Trump's brand is to revitalize the economies of distressed factory towns across the Midwest — but the amount of money he wants to put into these communities is completely at odds with his dismantling of federal programs that these areas already depend on, wrote University of Chicago sociologist Jerel Ezell in an analysis for Politico.

Ezell hails from Flint, Michigan, where General Motors was born and which has seen an economic decline in recent decades. It's the site of the infamous water crisis of the 2010s, where state-appointed officials ordered the city's water sources switched as a cost-cutting measure and exposed thousands of people to lead contamination, prompting a years-long cleanup.

"Flint appears to be the kind of city that Trump believes his agenda, particularly the sweeping tariffs he is imposing, will revitalize," wrote Ezell. But even aside from the fact economists warn Trump's tariffs will devastate the larger economy, the effect even on the areas whose jobs they're supposed to protect is not so simple.

First of all, he continued, "the Trump administration is making other moves that are already having the opposite effect in Flint: 11 years after the city’s water famously became toxic, the administration is lifting water and environmental quality controls, canceling research to monitor residents’ health and upending early education programs. The net result is that Trumponomics will actually impede the critical revitalization efforts that are needed in the Rust Belt."

Meanwhile, Trump is also showering large corporations with tax breaks and rolling back public health regulations. These policies, Ezell wrote, are "designed to promote economic growth with little attention to the culture and health of people in the communities they affect. This means that the administration’s policies inevitably come at the expense of critical environmental protections and public health measures that are already greatly imperiled in the many low-income communities like Flint that dot the Midwest."

All of this will make more disasters like the Flint water crisis likely in the very places Trump wants to strengthen — and while Flint now has clean water again, the damage can't be undone.

Per the work of some researchers, Ezell wrote, "fertility rates in Flint dipped by 12 percent and that overall health at birth decreased. And roughly 29 percent of [surveyed] Flint adults ... showed heightened signs of posttraumatic stress disorder in relationship to the water crisis. These are just a few of the harrowing results of studies conducted in Flint in the aftermath of one of the nation’s most tragic — and preventable — environmental disasters."

"While campaigning in 2016, Trump, who visited Flint twice during his initial presidential run and once during his latest run, once observed, 'It used to be, cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint,'" wrote Ezell. "His quip wasn’t far off, but a larger point was missed. Tariffs might restart some level of domestic manufacturing, but without deeper investment in our social and public health infrastructure, cities like Flint won’t recover and will remain unable to offer its residents either manufacturing jobs or clean water — or much else."