Only Trump’s Economic Policies Can Turn Milwaukee Around

Working-class voters in Milwaukee would benefit from the fair trade, lower taxes, and lower inflation that Trump would bring to Wisconsin

If former President Donald Trump wins in November, his economic policies would bring much-needed relief to Milwaukee’s working class, which has suffered four decades of failed Democratic policies.

Dane and Milwaukee Counties constitute blue dots in a sea of Wisconsin red that make the state electorally competitive. In 2016 and 2020, Trump only won 23 percent of the vote in Dane County, home to the capital Madison and the University of Wisconsin—one of the most liberal public universities in the country. In 2020, Trump’s votes in Dane County made up less than 5 percent of his statewide total.

Government employment, higher education, and tech fuel much of Madison’s economy—industries that Democratic policies subsidize at everyone else’s expense. This provides little room for improvement for Trump’s brand of conservatism, which appeals to working-class voters abandoned by the Democratic Party.

Milwaukee County, however, gave Trump 29 percent of its vote in both elections, which in 2020, constituted 8.3 percent of his statewide total, more than any other community in the state. Trump’s Milwaukee voters are also younger than in the rest of the state. One in five of his voters there were under 30, compared with one in ten in other counties.

Wisconsin’s largest city remains a Democratic stronghold largely off the backs of the struggling working-class whom the Democratic Party’s policies have impoverished and kept down through bad economic theory and trade deals. The key to turning Wisconsin reliably red rests with reaching these voters with plans to lift them financially and socially.

Besides Dane County, the rest of Wisconsin has fared poorly under the Biden-Harris administration. WalletHub ranks its economy 40th nationally, down from 27th in 2014. At the beginning of 2024, layoffs at major companies in Wisconsin surged 109 percent over 2023. 

The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC)’s biannual survey of 180 employers of all sizes, industries, and geographic locations found that only 22 percent of employers have a positive view of the state’s economy, compared with 39 percent six months earlier and down from 58 percent in the Summer 2021 survey. Less than half plan to hire in the next six months—down from 60 percent in 2023 and 68 percent in 2022. 

Milwaukee has led the charge in Wisconsin residents’ growing economic misery.

In 2021, Forbes ranked Milwaukee 2nd in poverty among the nation’s 50 largest cities, although it noted that urban poverty fell nationwide during the Trump years. By 2023, a quarter of the city’s population lived in poverty.

Restoration News has shown how the Biden-Harris rent inflation has especially harmed the working poor. Forbes ranks Milwaukee 16th worst among the 95 largest cities in the country for renters. Today, almost half of Milwaukee renters spend more than 30 percent of their household income on rent. 

The Metro Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) tracks the city’s economic health based on numerous monthly indicators. In July 2024 only 7 of its 23 indicators showed improvement compared with July 2023, marking the 12th consecutive month of overall decline. This included a rising number of unemployed, which reached 30,800.

Taxpayer-funded public sector employment represents the only industry that saw a significant increase since 2023. Manufacturing, once the city’s dominant industry, fell 0.8 percent, continuing its decline since 2019.

For those who retain manufacturing jobs in Milwaukee, wages have not only failed to keep up with the Biden-Harris inflation. They’ve fallen.

Since July 2023, average manufacturing hours in Milwaukee have remained the same at 36.7 per week. Average weekly compensation, however, fell a whopping 8 percent, despite a 2.9 percent rise in inflation. This suggests that despite the jobs paying less, workers cannot make up for it with more hours. This indicates either replacement manufacturing—when a company closes, and another absorbs the laid-off workers at a lower wage point—or replacement workers—when a company lays off its existing workforce and rehires at a lower wage point.

When adjusted for inflation, they earn $140 less per week than they did under Trump before the pandemic.

The fall in discretionary income under the Biden-Harris administration shows in consumption trends. Car registrations in Milwaukee fell 12 percent from July 2023 to July 2024. More notably, in 2019, Milwaukee registered 1,872 new cars compared with just 874 in 2024.

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The Ultimate Rust Belt City

The situation for working-class Milwaukeeans is even more tragic considering it was once known as “the machine shop of the world.” In the 1950s, nearly 60 percent of the city's adult population worked in manufacturing. In 1969, it had the second-highest median income of any city in the country. It has since lost 80 percent of its manufacturing jobs.

The economic prospects for the city’s black working class fell especially hard within a single generation. In 1970, 43 percent of black Milwaukeeans worked in manufacturing, more than in every city in the country, including Detroit. This led to their enjoying 19 percent higher incomes than the national black average in the 1970s. Adjusted for inflation, black Milwaukeeans today earn 30 percent less than in 1979. 

American manufacturing gradually outsourced thanks to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) under Democratic President Harry Truman. In Milwaukee, blue-collar jobs held strong until the Recession of 1981–82, caused by four decades of Democratic Keynesian economics. From 1979–1983, the city lost a quarter of its manufacturing jobs. Unemployment rose to 13.4 percent. At one point, more than 20,000 laid-off workers lined up in 29-degree weather for 200 available jobs at an auto frame factory. 

Time wrote presciently in 1983: “Hit first and hardest by the recession, the Midwest may be the last region in the country to recover.” 

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) under President Bill Clinton put the final nail in Midwestern manufacturing, despite nearly two-thirds of Americans opposing the agreement at the time. This gave companies new ammunition to require more from their workers for fewer benefits under the threat of outsourcing. 

Master Lock was one of the longest holdouts. It closed its Milwaukee shop in March 2024. It outsourced most of its jobs to China in the 1990s until Chinese became too expensive. The company brought some of those jobs back to Milwaukee but at diminished wages that didn't keep pace with inflation.

For Democratic leadership, however, votes matter. People don't.

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia,” Senator Chuck Schumer pompously declared before the 2016 election. “And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Democrats’ solution for blue-collar workers who lost their jobs in the Midwest is to throw a few subsidized “green” jobs their way to mollify them. This allows the party to repay its clean energy donors, appease the climate change fanatics, and—hopefully—win back some of the blue wall votes they lost through free trade and globalism.

In a low-inflation economy, this tactic might work on the margins. But clean energy manufacturers in Milwaukee who owe their jobs to Biden told Politico they’re thinking of voting for Trump because of the Biden-Harris inflation.

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Trump’s Policies Would Relieve the Milwaukee Working Class 

Per capita income in Milwaukee rose 15.6 percent during the Trump years—more than during all 8 years of former President Barack Obama. Despite inflation rising more than 20 percent, per capita income in Milwaukee has flatlined under Biden-Harris.

The most immediate change that Trump would bring is by ceasing to pour fuel on the inflation fire. Biden is a traditional Keynesian who in three years supercharged inflation in a way that took Democrats of old three decades. His American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act doubled down on the policies that led to the Recession of 1981–82 and the evisceration of Milwaukee’s blue-collar middle class.

Trump’s trade policies would benefit the working class by protecting American industry with tariffs. Trump’s first foray into politics began with criticizing the effects of GATT in the 1980s, which made the 1982 Recession permanent in manufacturing towns. 

Trump’s No Tax on Tips policy would greatly help those in the service industry where many would-be blue-collar workers have had to take refuge. Like many other once-great cities with hollowed-out manufacturing bases, Milwaukee has sought to make up for some of it with hospitality and tourism. The biased mainstream media has made much of how little spending from the Republican National Convention trickled down to service industry workers. Removing taxes on tips would at least prevent Uncle Sam from reducing the one income stream that some service workers have to get ahead.

Trump’s No Tax on Overtime policy would reward workers who are working extra to compensate for the Biden-Harris inflation. It would also incentivize employers to allow workers more hours as it would constitute a raise that doesn’t come out of their pockets. As mentioned previously, over the past year, average manufacturing hours worked in Milwaukee have stagnated while average compensation has fallen.

Trump would also extend the 2017 tax cuts, which doubled the standard deduction. This disproportionately helps people making less than $75,000.

Social and economic factors make Dane County difficult for the fair trade message that Trump brings. Voter-rich Milwaukee, however, with hundreds of thousands of workers whom failed globalist policies have devastated provides the key to turning Wisconsin reliably Republican. Trump’s policies of ending Keynesian economics, trade deals that benefit American workers rather than international capital, and lower taxes for working-class people would help Milwaukee’s working class restore its city to its former glory.

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