Pennsylvania city divided over Trump as it reels from economic whiplash | Pennsylvania

IIt was the most expensive project Erie, Pennsylvania’s struggling manufacturing sector had seen in decades. In a blighted corner of the city, a startup planned to build a $300 million factory that would turn plastic waste into fuel for steel mills.

Advocates for neighborhoods in poor east Erie hoped the facility would provide the jobs and prosperity they needed. Environmentalists denounced the pollution they expected from the plant. Unions were preparing for what they hoped would be hundreds of jobs created by its construction, with more to come after it opened.

And then it was over. Mitch Hecht, founder of the project company, announced that a Department of Energy loan, crucial to financing the plant, had been suspended due to Donald Trump’s policies, which “had a serious and immediate impact on our ability to move forward.”

It’s the latest economic boost to hit the county on the shores of Lake Erie in northwestern Pennsylvania, just months after its voters helped bring Trump back to the White House. Those who have supported the president say they remain with him, even as his administration’s spending cuts have upended plans and budgets and tariffs have created new uncertainties for businesses.

Once a reliable Democrat at the presidential level, Erie County has become hotly contested territory since 2016, when Trump became the first Republican to win the area in 32 years. Joe Biden won the county by just 1,417 votes four years later, but he returned to Trump in 2024 by almost the same margin.

“We’re currently poised for extreme growth over the next 15, 20, 30 years, and as we try to get away from the starting line, we’re getting clobbered by these broader macroeconomic policies and these intentional immigration policies that are creating an inflationary environment,” said Drew Whiting, CEO of the Erie Downtown Development Corporation.

The nonprofit’s renovation efforts have opened a food hall as well as new apartments and stores in what was once the poorest ZIP code in the United States, and its latest project is a mixed-use space that could create 100 jobs and bring in up to $10 million in tax revenue annually. But since the start of the year, labor and material costs have jumped 37%, which Whiting blamed on a dollar weakened by economic uncertainty, as well as labor shortages made worse by Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A short drive from downtown, a sign reading: “A recycling revolution is underway in Erie” outside a long-closed paper mill is the only remaining sign of the plastic waste facility that startup International Recycling Group (IRG) planned to build there.

Although environmental groups have warned that the IRG plant would create more pollution and lead to Lake Erie being filled with waste, projects intended to combat the climate crisis and address long-standing issues such as how to eliminate plastic waste were priorities of the Biden administration.And Last year, IRG announced it had received a $182 million loan commitment from the Department of Energy.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order suspending the disbursement of these funds, and in April of this year, Hecht announced that the loan had been suspended and the project would be canceled. WRI did not respond to a request for comment and the Department of Energy did not respond to an email sent during the government shutdown.

Railing against “waste, fraud and abuse” in Washington, Trump suspended numerous federal programs. Erie food bank Second Harvest lost $1 million that would have gone toward purchasing food, or about 25 percent of its budget, because of these funding cuts, said its CEO, Gregory Hall.

At the same time, the need for assistance has only increased, climbing by 43% over the past two to three years, as food prices have risen. pink and local grocers went bankrupt. The state legislature’s impasse over approving the budget, which began in July, has only worsened the financial situation.

“There have been a plethora of different funding reductions, different canceled programs, that really impact not only the quantity of food, but the types and quality of food that we can provide to neighbors in our area,” Hall said.

Trump’s solution to the ills plaguing communities like Erie is tariffs, which he says will encourage businesses to bring jobs back to the United States from abroad and protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. Businesses are divided over the significance of the levies and whether the unrest they have caused is worth it.

“It has a huge impact on profitability, but it also leads to the product not being harvested,” said Roger Schultz, a farmer outside Erie who said his biggest apple markets, Canada and Mexico, are much less interested in taking his crop this year because of the levies.

He was skeptical that the president’s promises about new trade deals would lead to the reopening of those markets.

“Fundamental changes have occurred in the marketplace, and no amount of advocacy, no price cutting or ‘Hey, don’t you try this’ will get you back down that road,” Schultz said.

At injected plastics company Erie Molded Packaging, sales are up 15% this year, and its president, Tom Tredway, said he plans to expand his plant, thanks in part to tax deductions for companies included in Trump and the Republican Party’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Although all of their suppliers and customers are in the United States, the thin-gauge aluminum used in their plastic container liners is made overseas, and tariffs have driven up prices.

“It’s a nuisance more than anything,” he said.

Jezree Friend, vice president of the Manufacturer and Business Association, an Erie-based advocacy and education group, described the higher costs as a necessary evil.

“It’s a growing pain that’s creeping up on you now. I think a lot of business owners recognize that and are actually OK with it, from what they tell me,” he said.

When Second Harvest distributes groceries, people line up in their cars hours early, worried they’ll run out of food. Those who supported the president last Wednesday said they were pleased with what he had done so far.

“I think he’s standing up for the people. I think he’s doing a good job,” said Norm Francis, 81, who runs a stained glass repair business. “Corporate greed,” he said, is responsible for food prices that have become increasingly unaffordable for him, but tariffs are “the right thing to do.”

Before him was Sally Michalak, 73, a retiree who was counting on Trump’s deportation campaign to curb inflation.

“It’s getting rid of the illegals, so once this is all sorted out, I think food prices will go down,” she said.

As for the funding cuts, Michalak ignored them, seeing them as a necessary part of transforming a government she saw as broken.

“It’s just one of those deals where, if the house burns down, you have to completely tear it down before you rebuild it, and that’s what he’s doing,” she said.

Rebuilding was on the mind of Gary Horton, executive director of the Urban Erie Community Development Corporation, as he sat in the gymnasium of a shuttered elementary school, not far from where IRG would have built its plant. Closed in 2012 as enrollment in surrounding neighborhoods declined, the Burton school was used by local police for active shooter drills that left paint splatters on the walls and bullet casings on the floor.

Two years ago, Horton’s group bought it and turned the land into a community garden, with the intention of reopening the school if the neighborhood’s economy recovered, with help from the plastic factory.

“Success would have helped us here, but it also might have helped cultivate an atmosphere where other developers or other project owners would do the same thing,” Horton said.

Now that the project has been canceled, “the chances of doing something now are not great,” Horton conceded. “But we still have challenges and we still have opportunities.”