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The economy is all over the news right now. Last week alone, we saw how a week jobs report in the US could wipe billions off stock markets around the world. The Federal Reserve is under pressure to cut rates and avoid a recession before it's too late. And in the middle of all this economic drama.
Philadelphia, it is good to be back in Pennsylvania.
Well, there's an election, and all eyes are on a key group of states with economic concerns of their own.
When it comes to election day in November, seven states are likely to be where the election will be decided, So we decided to take a look at the economy in those seven states.
Sean Donnon is a senior writer at Bloomberg News.
Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missia, North Carolina, and Georgia. I think I got them all. So we're talking about sixty one million people, about seventeen percent of the US population. But it's also an economy that, if you put it out in the world, would be huge, just slightly bigger than Japan and almost as big as Germany's.
Sean calls this the battleground economy. Pollsters and pundits say that seven swing states could decide the presidential election in November, so the economic forces shaping the lives of voters in those states are important to understand. Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris know how important it is to convince swing state voters that if they take office, they'll turn things around. You can see that reflected in
who they chose for their running mates. Trump chose Ohio Senator jd Vance and just last week, Harris tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. While neither of them directly represent states in the group of seven that Sewn mentioned, both picks are seen widely as an appeal to voters in Midwestern industrial st dates places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and when Shawn and his colleagues looked at the economy in these places, they found that this battleground economy is showing some economic cracks.
You know, a lot of economists have been miffed that voters and polls after polls say that they are feeling grumpy about the economy when at a national level, the US economy looks like it's in root health and in fact, in historically good shape. But it's when you dig down and you go to look at these state economies and then you go down to the county level even that things start to look a little bit different.
It's a complicated picture. Arizona has, by some measures, enjoyed strong growth, but inflation and soaring housing costs have hit household budgets hard, much as they have in Nevada and North Carolina. Meanwhile, Georgia has benefited from new investments and electric vehicle plants, but it's also seemed growth diluted by
the swell of new residents. Today, on the show, Inside the Battleground Economy that could decide the twenty twenty four presidential election, what Americans feel in those states about their economic prospects and how that could impact their vote. From Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the Big Take DC Podcast. I'm Saleia. Mosen Erie County, Pennsylvania has about two hundred and seventy thousand residents. It's a purple county, a mix of red and blue Republicans and.
Democrats, a swing county in a swing state. It is a place that Donald Trump won in twenty sixteen. Joe Biden won by fourteen hundred votes in twenty twenty.
It's also in the heart of what political wonks call the blue Wall states that Democrats have historically relied on for a clear path to the presidency. Some states within the blue Wall, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, were once industrial hubs, and from twenty nineteen to the end of twenty twenty three, their economies have experienced slower growth than non battleground states. It's a change people like Phil Kerner
have felt firsthand. He's a third generation Eerie manufacturer, known locally as the tool and Die Guy for the YouTube videos that he posts about production.
If our plant shut down tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd find a job. Okay, nineteen ninety five, I'm walking down the street with my toolbox is wheeling a block away, probably getting raised and going right to work that afternoon. See that's the way it used to be.
Phil used to own his own shop, mostly building molds for consumer products and toys, but by the early two thousands, he says, he was priced out. His biggest customers, like Fisher Price, took their business overseas.
At the end there, I'd quote eighteen thousand dollars on a mold and I would be beat by China. They would come at thirty five hundred. My steal was going to cost more than that just my materials, let alone the labor. So it was kind of heartbreaking.
Erie County has for decades been dealing with those kind of typical rest belt the industrialization factories closing. You know, those dynamics that Donald Trump took advantage of in twenty sixteen in that Joe Biden has sought to address by trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
Phil says President Biden's efforts haven't done much on the ground, at least not in ways that he can feel. He generally votes Republican and says that most of his coworkers at his plants support Trump. Gas was cheaper, he said, when Trump was president. Of course, those cheaper gas prices were before the pandemic, which Sean says hit places like Eerie hard.
Erie County is a place that's still lagging in its recovery. By the end of twenty twenty two, which is the most recent data we have available from the government, was still three point two percent smaller than it was going into the pandemic. That's not a good thing. You want economies to continue growing, and it hasn't seen major manufacturing investments in recent years. You still see fewer people working in factories there than did going into the pandemic. You
also see the population has continued to decline. So it is a place that is in need of help.
The federal government has tried to help, and erie based companies are investing money in the local economy one point two billion dollars revamping the downtown, a new food hall, plans for a boutique hotel.
But when you get there and you start talking to people on the ground, they say, yes, we're seeing a new boulevard along the lakefront and some improvements in the downtown area, but we're not really feeling it. Then you hear the common complaints that you hear in a lot about the place. It's about inflation, about grocery store prices, interest rates, housing costs.
Sean, along with economists at Bloomberg Economics, found that this is happening in a lot of counties throughout swing states. They wanted to understand the numbers that make up this important battleground economy.
It's something like four point four trillion dollars in gross domestic product, which is how we measure the size of economies. In fact, it would be the third or fourth largest economy in the world.
And within that subset of states, not all places are faring the way the rest of the US is.
President Biden often has talked about adding eight hundred thousand manufacturing jobs in the United States since he came into office, and that's true, but in a place like Pennsylvania, they actually haven't added that many manufacturing jobs. Just for context, across the US, about twenty percent of the population lives in a county that hadn't recovered to its twenty nineteen level of GDP by the end of twenty twenty two.
In Pennsylvania, forty percent of the population lives in those counties, most of which voted for Donald Trump in twenty twenty. So the lived experience at the local level is very different from what you're seeing nationally.
And it's not just the old industrial towns like Erie that are struggling. Sean also looked at Washoe County, Nevada, and the Reno area has drawn more than seventy six thousand new residents since twenty ten and transform the economy from a Casino hub to a manufacturing center sounds.
Rosy, right, They're the big issue is housing affordability. Why, because you've had this huge influx of people to work in either distribution warehouses. Walmart has a big distribution operation there, so does Amazon, or in some of the new factories that have sprung up in recent years. Tesla has an enormous gigafactory they call it. That's in the kind of mountains or near a reno. But then you have this
incredible demand for housing. The building there hasn't kept up with demand, and so housing prices have gone up, rents have gone up incredibly, The cost of a mortgage has gone up. In Nevada. In twenty nineteen, a household earning a median income would spend roughly nineteen percent of their income on a mortgage for a median house. By last year that had isen the thirty six percent of their income, and it almost doubled.
Three years post pandemic, we're still seeing a tremendous number of families, people who are working, working maybe more than one or two jobs, and they just cannot make ends meet.
Marie Baxter runs Catholic Charities, which provides services to people living in poverty in northern Nevada.
In our crisis intervention services, we see one hundred people a day on walkins and their stories are very similar. Literally, you know, within the thirty days, my rent has doubled or I've lost my job.
So you may have an economic boom going on in terms of employment, in terms of population. What's happening in Washoe County is the literal inverse of what is happening in the place like Erie County, but it comes with very different economic costs that people really feel.
All this could have major consequences for Democrats who are trying to convince and swing state voters that their policies have been good for the economy. In the latest Bloomberg News Morning Console poll, we asked swing state voters to name the single most important issue driving their vote, and the economy came out on top. But just how is that influencing who they plan to vote for come November. That's after the break.
We had fourteen children, and from the mid seventies to now, the economy it's like night and day.
Curtis Jones Senior is a pastor who's lived in Erie, Pennsylvania since he was a kid. And raised his family there.
When we were younger. You know, my parents have fourteen children, so you got to make some stuff spread out.
That's one of Curtis's kids, Curtis Jones Junior.
Eggs and rice was easy, inexpensive, but when you got man eggs at five dollars a dozen, that's not making it spread out.
Curtis Jones Junior got involved in local area politics in two thousand and five. He was elected to the city council running as a Democrat.
Many members of our family voted for the first time when I was running for school board and city council because there was a disconnect with the electoral politics and government and elected officials with the average citizen who often didn't feel like elected officials heard their voices could meet their needs. Today, like we're seeing a lot of that still with low further turnouts. You know, what's my option is the devil or Satan? Who I'm going to vote for? Like people say things like that.
Curtis Junior works on Erie's regional Chamber of Commerce now, and he says national politicians haven't been speaking to the issues his community faces on the ground, even when they throw money at them.
We see projects, we see economic development happening, but don't always say oh, that's because of the Biden administration or it's because of the governor. Like most people aren't thinking that way. The average person is struggling. It's an interesting that caught almost like detailed two cities.
Right.
So you've got funding for business development economic development projects in our downtown, but we're also seeing regrettably an increased number of an housed and under housed in our community. Individual households are struggling significantly because of the cost increases.
The other thing that you hear is well, things were better not that long ago. People look back five years ago and who was in the office at that time. That's Donald Trump, and they say, well, look, you know, love them or hate them, life was easier at that time. There are lots of different things that voters take into consideration, but the economy is the kind of context that doesn't go away.
When we pulled swing state voters on who they trusted more to handle the economy, fifty percent said Trump, forty two percent said Harris. That's higher than the thirty seven percent who said they trusted Joe Biden last month, but still a noticeable gap.
Consistently, Donald Trump gets better ratings on the economy, and a lot of that has to do with this grind that people are feeling, and that's the disconnect between the national numbers that look great, but when you dig down and you get to the local level, that's where things really change, whether it's in Eary County or in Washer County. And people are feeling grumpy for that reason.
And not all that much can change between now in November. Even if the Fed does cut interest rates this fall.
The way that flows through the economy is it takes time. By the time you get to September, that's probably too late to have a real impact on this rate. And I think also people have kind of enduring memories, right, I mean, it's people know what they're living. And there's a lot that Joe Biden and the Democrats have done in terms of industrial policy, and there's been an incredible boom and investment in new factories. The problem is that those new factories haven't been built yet right now, and
so the hiring in those places hasn't really happened. The big manufacturing jobs boom that you would expect to come at some point hasn't come. Yet, and whoever is in the White House come next year twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six, twenty seven is likely to benefit from that investment that is happening now. That's good for the US economy, it may not be good for the Democratic Party.
That's something Harris will be up against as she shapes her economic message, because for people in places like Erie County, the economic figures that the Biden administration and now the Harris campaign are touting can sometimes feel like false advertising.
My wife and I were talking about something that happened yesterday.
Pastor Curtis Jones Senior again.
She asked me to go get her a sub sandwich, a bacon combination style submarine sandwich. So I went and got it, and she walked into the room and said, you know, I asked for bacon and they put bacon bits on it. It made me lab at a point where like, is this what the economy has come to? We're not actually putting slices of bacon, We're putting bacon bits on the subs. We sort of laughed at it, and then but we said, you know, it's really sort
of sad. I think that's pretty much where our economy is now as far as we're asking for one thing and looking for something and expecting it and ultimately we're getting bits and pieces.
That's a mic drop right there.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Salai Emosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Sarah Halsack. It was fact checked by Alex Sagia. A special thanks to Wendy Benjaminson, who interviewed Sean for this episode and provides editorial direction for the show. With Elizabeth Ponso, Naomi Shaven and Kim Gettleson are our senior producers. Nicole Beemsterbower is our executive producer.
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take DC wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show.