Why did the Rust Belt really lose its manufacturing base? Middlebury College political scientist Gary Winslett has a provocative answer: It wasn't China or robots. It was Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and Florida. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Winslett argued that the South's pro-growth policies—not foreign competition or automation—were the real drivers behind the industrial shift. That makes for an uncomfortable narrative in a political environment where both parties have a stake in telling more convenient stories about trade and globalization.

Winslett explains how factors like "right to work" laws, housing construction, regulatory efficiency, and immigration made the South more attractive to manufacturers. The conversation moves beyond nostalgia for lost factories and asks whether the American dream now lies in places like Nashville and Raleigh—and whether we're too busy looking backward to notice.

Sources Referenced:

• "Manufacturing is thriving in the South. Here's why neither party can admit it." by Gary Winslett


• U.S. export share: Rust Belt vs. southern states


• Annual New Privately Owned Housing Units Authorized by State, by the U.S. Census Bureau


• "What to Know About the U.S. Trade Imbalance, in Charts," by Alana Pipe, Drew An-Pham, and Jeanne Whalen


• Milo Yiannopolis on X: Americans will love working in factories again

Men are depressed and addicted and broken because they have nothing to do. They get no stimulation or satisfaction from BS email jobs. I'm telling you, white Americans will love working in factories again. Making things, in the image and likeness of God the Maker.

— MILO (@Nero) April 4, 2025

• Howard Lutnick on CNBC: You and your grandkids will work in the same factory

Lutnick: It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here and your grandkids work here pic.twitter.com/dRq9aDfdgH

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 3, 2025

• J.D. Vance's 2024 Republican National Convention speech

Chapters:

• 00:00 What really happened to Rust Belt jobs?


• 05:11 The politics of the manufacturing decline


• 10:22 Nostalgia and the rise of southern manufacturing


• 15:20 Unionization, right to work, and labor policy


• 20:43 How immigration and housing fueled southern growth


• 26:02 Why the Rust Belt didn't adapt


• 32:21 Permitting, regulation, and business friendliness


• 38:36 Trade deficits and service exports


• 44:05 The myth of manufacturing as America's future


• 50:01 Remote work and the class divide


• 56:26 Upward mobility and bipartisan economic failure

Transcript:

This is an AI-generated transcript. Check against the original before quoting.

Zach Weissmueller: Today's guest recently argued in the pages of The Washington Post that it wasn't China or the robots who took most of the Midwestern jobs—it was the South. Gary Winslett is an associate professor at Middlebury College. He's here today to discuss that provocative argument and its implications with us today. Thank you for joining us, Gary.

Gary Winslett: Happy to be here.

Liz Wolfe: So, the proportion of exports from Rust Belt states has plunged since the '90s while rising in the Southern states. But you never hear this story about manufacturing in our political discourse. 

Gary, why?

Gary Winslett: Because it's inconvenient politically for both parties.

The Republicans love to be this party of romantic nostalgia—"take us back to the past." Under Donald Trump, they also really liked tariffs. So, they don't want to acknowledge that, in one part of the country, things are going great in terms of manufacturing. That undercuts their "everything is going to hell" kind of argument on their side.

On the Democratic side, they'd rather blame greedy corporations or China because that doesn't point to some of the policy choices that Southern states have made that challenge the log rolling coalitional politics of the Democratic Party.

If you're going to point out that, "Hey, Georgia has a great permitting reform where they help manufacturing firms set up shop quickly", that directly challenges the way we do things in California, where it's a nightmare to set up anything. The success of right-to-work in South Carolina directly challenges the power of organized labor that other parts of the party really like.

So, it's just not convenient for either party. And like politicians tend to do, they ignore the inconvenience to sell what they'd rather be the truth.

Liz Wolfe: But are we, as libertarians or libertarian-adjacent people, also doing the same thing where we're paying attention to the politically convenient narrative for us?

Because in a sense, you're basically vindicating what libertarians and small-government advocates have been saying all along, which is you create a more fertile environment in your state, you attract businesses there, you make it a little harder for unions to operate, and all of a sudden, growth happens. This is a very convenient thing for us to believe. Are we succumbing to the same thing?

Gary Winslett: I don't know.

There are other areas where I think libertarian-adjacent people could do better. I think some of the stuff on social safety net really can be strengthened. We probably don't spend enough in this country on poor children. Universal free school lunch is something I think would be great.

But on this particular topic, I think the libertarian or libertarian-adjacent approach—I consider myself a market-friendly Democrat—is right. So I don't think we need to go around apologizing on those topics where we're right.

Zach Weissmueller: Yeah, and we'll get into some of the empirical data here in a second that completely validates what we've been saying for all these years.

But first, I just want to ask a bigger kind of political question. When you look at the amount of people working in jobs that are directly competitive with import-heavy industries—in other words, jobs that would ideally be protected by something like tariffs—it's fairly low. I pulled this from the 2024 Trade Organization report. I've got the red arrow there pointing to: less than 2 percent of U.S. jobs are competing directly with an overseas manufacturing industry.

Given that reality, why do you think this draws such political heat? Why is so much attention focused on it?

Gary Winslett: The biggest thing people don't think about is how much imports are inputs into other manufactured goods.

I grew up in Alabama. My dad worked in one of the steel plants in Birmingham—the kind of hard-hat job that they make political ads about, the kind protectionism is supposed to be for. They ha