Geno DiFabio, a trucker in Lordstown, Ohio, says only President Trump could have brokered a deal to keep auto jobs in his community after General Motors (GM) idled their plant.
“Geno is a truck driver from Ohio, who heard politicians for years make empty promises about defending American jobs, only to see those promises broken again and again,” Vice President Mike Pence said in a video montage during the second evening of the Republican National Convention (RNC). He continued:
In 2019, when General Motors closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio. President Donald Trump refused to stand by and watch it happen. And as Geno observed, this president reached out to General Motors to find a way to bring jobs back to Lordstown. And plans were soon set into motion to create Lordstown Motors.
“President Trump says. ‘This is how we fix it.’ And I thought, well that’s a simple solution,” DiFabio said. “There’s no other president … there’s no other that even tried to do it.”
As Breitbart News has chronicled, GM CEO Mary Barra idled the Lordstown plant last year — resulting in the immediate layoff of about 1,600 American workers, and since 2017, GM has laid off about 4,500 American workers in Ohio. Economists have said GM’s idling in Lordstown will eventually result in the layoff of about 8,000 American workers in supporting industries.
With pressure from Trump, GM sold the plant to Lordstown Motors, a cutting-edge electric vehicle company, which is now vowing to hire about 600 Americans next year to help produce its first round of 20,000 all-electric pickup trucks known as the Endurance.
In 2022, Lordstown Motors expects to hire more workers to produce a line of all-electric SUVs and pickup trucks.
After its initial hiring of about 600 Americans, executives hope to hire an additional 4,000 to 5,000 for the plant as early as 2022 to produce other all-electric vehicles based on demand.
Likewise, GM broke ground on construction for a new factory in Lordstown that will produce battery cells and packs.
American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries. Decades of free trade have eliminated five million manufacturing jobs from the American economy and resulted in the closure of about 50,000 manufacturing plants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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