By Quin Hillyer at National Review Online;
When President-elect Trump returns Saturday to Mobile, Ala., famously the site of his first campaign mega-rally, he has a chance not just to revel in an extremely friendly reception but also to learn some lessons from a thriving community. Chief among those lessons is that a more nuanced approach to his “get tough” outlook on trade would better accomplish his own, admirable aims of protecting American workers.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Consider the renaissance that in 2015 made Mobile the top-rated “midsized city” for manufacturing growth, according to Forbes.com. Almost all of it was driven by foreign-owned corporations. With 4,200 employees, Austal Shipyards is the area’s largest manufacturer. Its corporate home is Australia. At Brookley Field, where Trump’s private jet landed for his 2015 rally, VT Mobile Aerospace Engineering, whose parent company is Singapore Technologies Engineering, employs 1,500 in Alabama and hundreds more in the Florida panhandle. Also at Brookley, Airbus planes are now rolling off the assembly line as the European corporation quickly ramps up to employing 1,000 full-time workers in the area….
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Suffice it to say that, if it was in Mobile that it first became clear just how wild and rambling but ultimately successful a campaign Trump would run, then this Saturday’s rally can likewise signal the start of a new, equally successful labor of the Trumpian odyssey….
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