Trump is 'saving us': Minnesota mining country warms to tariffs and GOP

But the tariffs on imported steel that President Donald Trump has announced are being celebrated as a boost to the local taconite mines, which supply American steel mills, and Republicans are hopeful that they can flip the area’s congressional seat in November.

“President Trump is keeping his promises that he made on the campaign trail,” said Pete Stauber, a retired police officer and former professional hockey player who is running for Congress as a Republican. “He talked about leveling the playing field for the American worker. He did that with the tariffs.”

Much has been said about groups who dislike the tariffs: a bipartisan mix of manufacturers, farmers and politicians who warn of trade disputes and unforeseen consequences. China’s announcement on Wednesday of proposed tariffs on a range of American exports — including soybeans, chemicals and cars — heightened concern that a trade war could be looming.

But in a few places where Republicans see openings to win seats and upend a national political forecast that seems to favor Democrats in November, the 25 percent tariff on foreign steel and the 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum are viewed as economic lifelines straight from the Oval Office.

In southern Illinois, where a Republican congressman, Mike Bost, faces a tough re-election campaign, a steel mill that laid off hundreds is calling back workers. In Ohio, where the governorship and a Senate seat are on this year’s ballot, another steel mill could soon reopen. And in upper Minnesota, where iron ore pits — vast canyons of red-tinted dirt — shape the landscape, the tariffs could be a stabilizing force for towns still recovering from mine closings.

“It’s really strange,” said Mayor Bob Vlaisavljevich of Eveleth, a longtime Democrat who in recent years has changed his registration to Republican and decorated his City Hall office with a Trump bumper sticker. “A billionaire from New York is the one saving us.”

Many in northern Minnesota still speak fondly about the Democrats in their own congressional delegation, and plenty have criticisms of the president’s Twitter habit and of Republican attitudes toward labor unions. But there is a broad sense that Trump has taken up the region’s cause right as the national Democratic Party is frustrating them with environmental regulations they see as unduly burdensome to miners and with calls for stricter limits on guns.

“I feel they’ve kind of gone off the deep end,” said Lyn Pahlen, 53, an auto-parts store owner who lives in Chisholm, Minnesota, where a 36-foot-tall statue of an iron miner towers above the main highway.

Pahlen, a former Democratic voter who supported Trump, said her business suffered a few years ago when an influx of foreign steel, much of it from China, led many of the local mines to temporarily shut down. With less money being spent around town, Pahlen cut some employees' hours and laid off others. Pahlen said she was taking a wait-and-see approach.

Conditions are better now. Mines began reopening in the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency, when he cracked down on steel dumping, and that growth has continued under Trump. The mines employ about 4,000 people in this sparsely populated region, according to the Iron Mining Association of Minnesota, and thousands of others work for mining industry vendors.

“Things are coming around,” said Dan Pierce, who was out of work for about 15 months after a mine in Keewatin, Minnesota, shut down in 2015.

Pierce, a Democrat and local union vice president, is no fan of Trump, and he was dismayed when the president temporarily exempted a few countries, including South Korea and Brazil, from the tariffs. Still, he said people were cautiously optimistic that the tariffs would have tangible benefits on the Iron Range.

“People are working overtime,” Pierce said. “People are spending money in the community.”

Stauber, the Republican candidate for Congress who serves now as a county commissioner, is hoping to capitalize on some of that economic momentum as he runs in Minnesota’s 8th District, which stretches more than 27,000 square miles from the Minneapolis exurbs through the Iron Range and up to the Canadian border.

The district, which Trump won by 15.6 percentage points in 2016, according to DailyKos Elections, could be one of the Republicans’ best chances of flipping a Democratic seat in the House. Obama carried the district by 5.5 percentage points in 2012; he won by 8.6 percentage points four years earlier. Rep. Rick Nolan, the incumbent Democrat, is retiring after narrowly winning re-election in 2016.

Much is riding on November for both parties. Minnesota’s U.S. senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Democrats, are up for election, and the state’s Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, is retiring and leaving an open seat.

Another congressional seat held by Democrats, the 1st District in the southern part of Minnesota, is also considered a tossup. Rep. Tim Walz won a close race in 2016 and is running for governor this year instead of seeking another term in the House.

Up on the Iron Range, Nolan supports the president’s tariffs and remains popular among miners. But he has faced pressure from some fellow Democrats who want stricter environmental regulations, as well as from right-leaning constituents disenchanted with his party. Democrats have not yet nominated a candidate to replace Nolan, 74, who said he was leaving office to spend more time with his family.

Nolan said the president “connects in his messaging” on the Iron Range by focusing on economic anxiety. Democrats could improve their pitch to voters on that topic, Nolan said.

“Miners who are sitting on the bench hoping to go back to work someday, and you have someone saying, ‘Hey, I care about you,'” Nolan said. “That means a lot to people.”

In the union halls and restaurants of northern Minnesota, the enthusiasm for the tariffs is tempered by decades of ups and downs, hiring sprees and layoffs. People often use phrases like “guarded optimism” and “stabilization.”

Many longtime residents — and it seems most everyone is a longtime resident — recall their fathers struggling without a job in the bust of the 1980s, or a grandfather encountering hard times. They tell of a time when places like Eveleth, where the population of 3,700 is about half of its 1930 peak, had more businesses, more young families, more high school graduates staying home instead of moving to the cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Brian Zarn, 54, grew up nearby and has worked at the mine in Eveleth for about 29 years. He said it had been a rewarding career with a salary that supported his family, but also work pockmarked by layoffs and frustration with foreign steel being sold cheaply on American shores.

“We’re cautiously optimistic, but we know the industry has got a lot of problems. China keeps overproducing,” said Zarn, a local union president, who was wearing a shirt that read, “STEELWORKERS Not Made In China.”

“We hope that the tariffs are in there long-term,” he added. “But we’re realists, too. We look at the past.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Trump is 'saving us': Minnesota mining country warms to tariffs and GOP

Generations of residents have gone to work in the mines, endured cycles of booms and layoffs, and mostly voted for Democrats.

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