Before it was the Rust Belt, America's industrial heartland was proudly called the Steel Belt
Chicago was a rural trading post in the 1840s and as big as Paris by 1893. Canals, railways and Great Lakes shipping turned the region into America's factory floor, then from the 1950s onward its mills and cities began a long slide that gave the area its unflattering nickname.
The Rust Belt is less a map than a condition, so its borders are fuzzy. Common definitions take in states from Illinois, Michigan and Ohio to Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, with cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Milwaukee at its core. Some residents consider the label an insult; the rust stands for the corrosive social effects of lost jobs, shrinking populations and urban decay.
The boom was built on geography and infrastructure. The interior was stitched to the East Coast by the Erie Canal, finished in 1825, then by rail lines such as the Baltimore and Ohio from 1830 and the Allegheny Portage from 1834. Once iron ore from the ranges of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan could meet coking coal from the Appalachian Basin, steelmaking took off, followed by car factories and heavy manufacturing. Millions of European immigrants filled the lakeside cities at record speed, and before World War II they ranked among the largest in the country.
Warning signs came early: by 1931 Harper's described Lowell, Massachusetts, whose textile mills had moved to the Carolinas, as a depressed industrial desert. Manufacturing peaked as a share of US GDP in 1953. Industry switched from coal to oil and gas, German and Japanese steel undercut American mills, labour costs pushed plants south, and suburbs drained city centres. From 1979 to 1982 the Federal Reserve's Volcker shock lifted interest rates to 19 per cent, strengthening the dollar and pricing US goods out of foreign markets. Rust Belt manufacturing employment fell 32.9 per cent between 1969 and 1996.
Trade added pressure. Deficits with China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan widened from 1984, and research by David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson estimates that expanding trade with China cost about one million American manufacturing jobs between 1991 and 2007, with no balancing gains elsewhere. Coastal hubs such as Boston and New York adapted by moving into services and technology, while many inland cities saw the steepest population losses in the country by the century's end. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain closely fought in presidential elections.
Source: Rust Belt
