Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: The economy is all over the news right now. Last
Speaker 2: week alone, we saw how a week jobs report in
Speaker 2: the US could wipe billions off stock markets around the world.
Speaker 2: The Federal Reserve is under pressure to cut rates and
Speaker 2: avoid a recession before it's too late. And in the
Speaker 2: middle of all this economic drama.
Speaker 3: Philadelphia, it is good to be back in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Well, there's an election, and all eyes are on a
Speaker 2: key group of states with economic concerns of their own.
Speaker 4: When it comes to election day in November, seven states
Speaker 4: are likely to be where the election will be decided,
Speaker 4: So we decided to take a look at the economy
Speaker 4: in those seven states.
Speaker 2: Sean Donnon is a senior writer at Bloomberg News.
Speaker 4: Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missia, North Carolina, and Georgia. I
Speaker 4: think I got them all. So we're talking about sixty
Speaker 4: one million people, about seventeen percent of the US population.
Speaker 4: But it's also an economy that, if you put it
Speaker 4: out in the world, would be huge, just slightly bigger
Speaker 4: than Japan and almost as big as Germany's.
Speaker 2: Sean calls this the battleground economy. Pollsters and pundits say
Speaker 2: that seven swing states could decide the presidential election in November,
Speaker 2: so the economic forces shaping the lives of voters in
Speaker 2: those states are important to understand. Both former President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris know how important it
Speaker 2: is to convince swing state voters that if they take office,
Speaker 2: they'll turn things around. You can see that reflected in
Speaker 2: who they chose for their running mates. Trump chose Ohio
Speaker 2: Senator jd Vance and just last week, Harris tapped Minnesota
Speaker 2: Governor Tim Walls. While neither of them directly represent states
Speaker 2: in the group of seven that Sewn mentioned, both picks
Speaker 2: are seen widely as an appeal to voters in Midwestern
Speaker 2: industrial st dates places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and when
Speaker 2: Shawn and his colleagues looked at the economy in these places,
Speaker 2: they found that this battleground economy is showing some economic cracks.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of economists have been miffed that
Speaker 4: voters and polls after polls say that they are feeling
Speaker 4: grumpy about the economy when at a national level, the
Speaker 4: US economy looks like it's in root health and in fact,
Speaker 4: in historically good shape. But it's when you dig down
Speaker 4: and you go to look at these state economies and
Speaker 4: then you go down to the county level even that
Speaker 4: things start to look a little bit different.
Speaker 2: It's a complicated picture. Arizona has, by some measures, enjoyed
Speaker 2: strong growth, but inflation and soaring housing costs have hit
Speaker 2: household budgets hard, much as they have in Nevada and
Speaker 2: North Carolina. Meanwhile, Georgia has benefited from new investments and
Speaker 2: electric vehicle plants, but it's also seemed growth diluted by
Speaker 2: the swell of new residents. Today, on the show, Inside
Speaker 2: the Battleground Economy that could decide the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: presidential election, what Americans feel in those states about their
Speaker 2: economic prospects and how that could impact their vote. From
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the Big Take DC Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Saleia. Mosen Erie County, Pennsylvania has about two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy thousand residents. It's a purple county, a mix
Speaker 2: of red and blue Republicans and.
Speaker 4: Democrats, a swing county in a swing state. It is
Speaker 4: a place that Donald Trump won in twenty sixteen. Joe
Speaker 4: Biden won by fourteen hundred votes in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: It's also in the heart of what political wonks call
Speaker 2: the blue Wall states that Democrats have historically relied on
Speaker 2: for a clear path to the presidency. Some states within
Speaker 2: the blue Wall, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, were once
Speaker 2: industrial hubs, and from twenty nineteen to the end of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, their economies have experienced slower growth than
Speaker 2: non battleground states. It's a change people like Phil Kerner
Speaker 2: have felt firsthand. He's a third generation Eerie manufacturer, known
Speaker 2: locally as the tool and Die Guy for the YouTube
Speaker 2: videos that he posts about production.
Speaker 5: If our plant shut down tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd
Speaker 5: find a job. Okay, nineteen ninety five, I'm walking down
Speaker 5: the street with my toolbox is wheeling a block away,
Speaker 5: probably getting raised and going right to work that afternoon.
Speaker 5: See that's the way it used to be.
Speaker 2: Phil used to own his own shop, mostly building molds
Speaker 2: for consumer products and toys, but by the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: he says, he was priced out. His biggest customers, like
Speaker 2: Fisher Price, took their business overseas.
Speaker 5: At the end there, I'd quote eighteen thousand dollars on
Speaker 5: a mold and I would be beat by China. They
Speaker 5: would come at thirty five hundred. My steal was going
Speaker 5: to cost more than that just my materials, let alone
Speaker 5: the labor. So it was kind of heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: Erie County has for decades been dealing with those kind
Speaker 4: of typical rest belt the industrialization factories closing. You know,
Speaker 4: those dynamics that Donald Trump took advantage of in twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen in that Joe Biden has sought to address by
Speaker 4: trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
Speaker 2: Phil says President Biden's efforts haven't done much on the ground,
Speaker 2: at least not in ways that he can feel. He
Speaker 2: generally votes Republican and says that most of his coworkers
Speaker 2: at his plants support Trump. Gas was cheaper, he said,
Speaker 2: when Trump was president. Of course, those cheaper gas prices
Speaker 2: were before the pandemic, which Sean says hit places like
Speaker 2: Eerie hard.
Speaker 4: Erie County is a place that's still lagging in its recovery.
Speaker 4: By the end of twenty twenty two, which is the
Speaker 4: most recent data we have available from the government, was
Speaker 4: still three point two percent smaller than it was going
Speaker 4: into the pandemic. That's not a good thing. You want
Speaker 4: economies to continue growing, and it hasn't seen major manufacturing
Speaker 4: investments in recent years. You still see fewer people working
Speaker 4: in factories there than did going into the pandemic. You
Speaker 4: also see the population has continued to decline. So it
Speaker 4: is a place that is in need of help.
Speaker 2: The federal government has tried to help, and erie based
Speaker 2: companies are investing money in the local economy one point
Speaker 2: two billion dollars revamping the downtown, a new food hall,
Speaker 2: plans for a boutique hotel.
Speaker 4: But when you get there and you start talking to
Speaker 4: people on the ground, they say, yes, we're seeing a
Speaker 4: new boulevard along the lakefront and some improvements in the
Speaker 4: downtown area, but we're not really feeling it. Then you
Speaker 4: hear the common complaints that you hear in a lot
Speaker 4: about the place. It's about inflation, about grocery store prices,
Speaker 4: interest rates, housing costs.
Speaker 2: Sean, along with economists at Bloomberg Economics, found that this
Speaker 2: is happening in a lot of counties throughout swing states.
Speaker 2: They wanted to understand the numbers that make up this
Speaker 2: important battleground economy.
Speaker 4: It's something like four point four trillion dollars in gross
Speaker 4: domestic product, which is how we measure the size of economies.
Speaker 4: In fact, it would be the third or fourth largest
Speaker 4: economy in the world.
Speaker 2: And within that subset of states, not all places are
Speaker 2: faring the way the rest of the US is.
Speaker 4: President Biden often has talked about adding eight hundred thousand
Speaker 4: manufacturing jobs in the United States since he came into office,
Speaker 4: and that's true, but in a place like Pennsylvania, they
Speaker 4: actually haven't added that many manufacturing jobs. Just for context,
Speaker 4: across the US, about twenty percent of the population lives
Speaker 4: in a county that hadn't recovered to its twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: level of GDP by the end of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: In Pennsylvania, forty percent of the population lives in those counties,
Speaker 4: most of which voted for Donald Trump in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: So the lived experience at the local level is very
Speaker 4: different from what you're seeing nationally.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the old industrial towns like Erie
Speaker 2: that are struggling. Sean also looked at Washoe County, Nevada,
Speaker 2: and the Reno area has drawn more than seventy six
Speaker 2: thousand new residents since twenty ten and transform the economy
Speaker 2: from a Casino hub to a manufacturing center sounds.
Speaker 4: Rosy, right, They're the big issue is housing affordability. Why,
Speaker 4: because you've had this huge influx of people to work
Speaker 4: in either distribution warehouses. Walmart has a big distribution operation there,
Speaker 4: so does Amazon, or in some of the new factories
Speaker 4: that have sprung up in recent years. Tesla has an
Speaker 4: enormous gigafactory they call it. That's in the kind of
Speaker 4: mountains or near a reno. But then you have this
Speaker 4: incredible demand for housing. The building there hasn't kept up
Speaker 4: with demand, and so housing prices have gone up, rents
Speaker 4: have gone up incredibly, The cost of a mortgage has
Speaker 4: gone up. In Nevada. In twenty nineteen, a household earning
Speaker 4: a median income would spend roughly nineteen percent of their
Speaker 4: income on a mortgage for a median house. By last
Speaker 4: year that had isen the thirty six percent of their income,
Speaker 4: and it almost doubled.
Speaker 1: Three years post pandemic, we're still seeing a tremendous number
Speaker 1: of families, people who are working, working maybe more than
Speaker 1: one or two jobs, and they just cannot make ends meet.
Speaker 2: Marie Baxter runs Catholic Charities, which provides services to people
Speaker 2: living in poverty in northern Nevada.
Speaker 1: In our crisis intervention services, we see one hundred people
Speaker 1: a day on walkins and their stories are very similar. Literally,
Speaker 1: you know, within the thirty days, my rent has doubled
Speaker 1: or I've lost my job.
Speaker 4: So you may have an economic boom going on in
Speaker 4: terms of employment, in terms of population. What's happening in
Speaker 4: Washoe County is the literal inverse of what is happening
Speaker 4: in the place like Erie County, but it comes with
Speaker 4: very different economic costs that people really feel.
Speaker 2: All this could have major consequences for Democrats who are
Speaker 2: trying to convince and swing state voters that their policies
Speaker 2: have been good for the economy. In the latest Bloomberg
Speaker 2: News Morning Console poll, we asked swing state voters to
Speaker 2: name the single most important issue driving their vote, and
Speaker 2: the economy came out on top. But just how is
Speaker 2: that influencing who they plan to vote for come November.
Speaker 2: That's after the break.
Speaker 3: We had fourteen children, and from the mid seventies to now,
Speaker 3: the economy it's like night and day.
Speaker 2: Curtis Jones Senior is a pastor who's lived in Erie,
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania since he was a kid. And raised his family there.
Speaker 6: When we were younger. You know, my parents have fourteen children,
Speaker 6: so you got to make some stuff spread out.
Speaker 2: That's one of Curtis's kids, Curtis Jones Junior.
Speaker 6: Eggs and rice was easy, inexpensive, but when you got
Speaker 6: man eggs at five dollars a dozen, that's not making
Speaker 6: it spread out.
Speaker 2: Curtis Jones Junior got involved in local area politics in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five. He was elected to the city
Speaker 2: council running as a Democrat.
Speaker 6: Many members of our family voted for the first time
Speaker 6: when I was running for school board and city council
Speaker 6: because there was a disconnect with the electoral politics and
Speaker 6: government and elected officials with the average citizen who often
Speaker 6: didn't feel like elected officials heard their voices could meet
Speaker 6: their needs. Today, like we're seeing a lot of that
Speaker 6: still with low further turnouts. You know, what's my option
Speaker 6: is the devil or Satan? Who I'm going to vote for?
Speaker 6: Like people say things like that.
Speaker 2: Curtis Junior works on Erie's regional Chamber of Commerce now,
Speaker 2: and he says national politicians haven't been speaking to the
Speaker 2: issues his community faces on the ground, even when they
Speaker 2: throw money at them.
Speaker 6: We see projects, we see economic development happening, but don't
Speaker 6: always say oh, that's because of the Biden administration or
Speaker 6: it's because of the governor. Like most people aren't thinking
Speaker 6: that way. The average person is struggling. It's an interesting
Speaker 6: that caught almost like detailed two cities.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So you've got funding for business development economic development projects
Speaker 6: in our downtown, but we're also seeing regrettably an increased
Speaker 6: number of an housed and under housed in our community.
Speaker 6: Individual households are struggling significantly because of the cost increases.
Speaker 4: The other thing that you hear is well, things were
Speaker 4: better not that long ago. People look back five years
Speaker 4: ago and who was in the office at that time.
Speaker 4: That's Donald Trump, and they say, well, look, you know,
Speaker 4: love them or hate them, life was easier at that time.
Speaker 4: There are lots of different things that voters take into consideration,
Speaker 4: but the economy is the kind of context that doesn't
Speaker 4: go away.
Speaker 2: When we pulled swing state voters on who they trusted
Speaker 2: more to handle the economy, fifty percent said Trump, forty
Speaker 2: two percent said Harris. That's higher than the thirty seven
Speaker 2: percent who said they trusted Joe Biden last month, but
Speaker 2: still a noticeable gap.
Speaker 4: Consistently, Donald Trump gets better ratings on the economy, and
Speaker 4: a lot of that has to do with this grind
Speaker 4: that people are feeling, and that's the disconnect between the
Speaker 4: national numbers that look great, but when you dig down
Speaker 4: and you get to the local level, that's where things
Speaker 4: really change, whether it's in Eary County or in Washer County.
Speaker 4: And people are feeling grumpy for that reason.
Speaker 2: And not all that much can change between now in November.
Speaker 2: Even if the Fed does cut interest rates this fall.
Speaker 4: The way that flows through the economy is it takes time.
Speaker 4: By the time you get to September, that's probably too
Speaker 4: late to have a real impact on this rate. And
Speaker 4: I think also people have kind of enduring memories, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's people know what they're living. And there's
Speaker 4: a lot that Joe Biden and the Democrats have done
Speaker 4: in terms of industrial policy, and there's been an incredible
Speaker 4: boom and investment in new factories. The problem is that
Speaker 4: those new factories haven't been built yet right now, and
Speaker 4: so the hiring in those places hasn't really happened. The
Speaker 4: big manufacturing jobs boom that you would expect to come
Speaker 4: at some point hasn't come. Yet, and whoever is in
Speaker 4: the White House come next year twenty twenty five, twenty
Speaker 4: twenty six, twenty seven is likely to benefit from that
Speaker 4: investment that is happening now. That's good for the US economy,
Speaker 4: it may not be good for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: That's something Harris will be up against as she shapes
Speaker 2: her economic message, because for people in places like Erie County,
Speaker 2: the economic figures that the Biden administration and now the
Speaker 2: Harris campaign are touting can sometimes feel like false advertising.
Speaker 3: My wife and I were talking about something that happened yesterday.
Speaker 2: Pastor Curtis Jones Senior again.
Speaker 3: She asked me to go get her a sub sandwich,
Speaker 3: a bacon combination style submarine sandwich. So I went and
Speaker 3: got it, and she walked into the room and said,
Speaker 3: you know, I asked for bacon and they put bacon
Speaker 3: bits on it. It made me lab at a point
Speaker 3: where like, is this what the economy has come to?
Speaker 3: We're not actually putting slices of bacon, We're putting bacon
Speaker 3: bits on the subs. We sort of laughed at it,
Speaker 3: and then but we said, you know, it's really sort
Speaker 3: of sad. I think that's pretty much where our economy
Speaker 3: is now as far as we're asking for one thing
Speaker 3: and looking for something and expecting it and ultimately we're
Speaker 3: getting bits and pieces.
Speaker 6: That's a mic drop right there.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salai Emosen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: Julia Press. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was
Speaker 2: edited by Aaron Edwards and Sarah Halsack. It was fact
Speaker 2: checked by Alex Sagia. A special thanks to Wendy Benjaminson,
Speaker 2: who interviewed Sean for this episode and provides editorial direction
Speaker 2: for the show. With Elizabeth Ponso, Naomi Shaven and Kim
Speaker 2: Gettleson are our senior producers. Nicole Beemsterbower is our executive producer.
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Please follow and
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