Category: Policy Paper

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Industrial Heartlands Policy Papers

In October 2024, just a few weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the project fellows traveled through the American industrial heartlands to get a first-hand impression of the prevailing political climate and to engage with numerous organizations and individuals who are deeply involved in shaping the future of these industrial heartlands.

The meetings in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities in these regions, allowing the project fellows to summarize their findings in policy papers that provide actionable recommendations for policymakers and change makers in both the United States and Germany.

Industrial heartlands must leverage their existing infrastructure, skilled workforces, and industrial heritage to drive innovation and create well-paying jobs, particularly in energy and green technologies. Public–private partnerships, regional innovation clusters, and trade union support will be essential, as seen in successful initiatives like the Youngstown Business Incubator, which fosters entrepreneurship, workforce development, and technological innovation. Civic engagement models, such as Erie’s Jefferson Educational Society, can help bridge partisan divides, while philanthropic capital and sovereign wealth funds can mitigate economic risks by reinvesting in key industries and community revitalization. By focusing on these strategies, industrial heartlands can become leaders in sustainable development, ensuring short-term economic benefits, long-term prosperity, and democratic resilience. By learning from U.S. experiences, Germany can compare and navigate its own industrial transformation while further promoting regional collaboration.

The industrial heartlands are places poised to lead the way into a more democratic, sustainable future. At the core of this transformation lies the power to unlock local leadership, foster regional collaboration, and provide the necessary tools for economic and social renewal. Through targeted policy recommendations, we aim to break through the structural barriers that have held back progress, unlocking the potential of every community to shape its future. By focusing on investment in people, place, and democratic processes, we can create vibrant, engaged communities that are resilient in the face of change and capable of guiding their own destinies.

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No Backlash, No Retreat

No Backlash, No Retreat

This representative survey conducted by Das Progressive Zentrum, in collaboration with the Progressive Policy Institute and Georgetown University’s Center for German and European Studies, provides new insights into public attitudes toward public investments and green transformation agendas in Germany and the U.S.

Against a backdrop of political upheaval and economic uncertainty, the findings reveal how these dynamics shape public opinion. Despite setbacks for green economic transformation, public support for climate and economic policies remains remarkably stable, with no significant backlash against green agendas in either country. 

Contrary to assumptions that Trump’s victory signals a rejection of green policies, the findings show that a majority of Americans continue to support ambitious climate initiatives that promise economic opportunities. While Trump’s “America First” approach has led to the U.S. withdrawing from international agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, public opinion demonstrates that “America First” does not equate to “climate second.” Notably, 42% of Trump voters see economic potential in climate action.

In Germany, a similar trend emerges. Despite concerns about economic stagnation and declining competitiveness, almost half of respondents support substantial investment in the green transformation of the economy.

There is also broad, cross-party backing for reforming the debt brake and increasing funding for economically disadvantaged regions, reflecting a shared recognition of the need to address regional inequalities and boost public investment in infrastructure, education, and innovation.

In both countries, the cost of living and economic stability remain top concerns, underscoring the financial pressures faced by many. These findings highlight the importance of reframing green policies to emphasize tangible benefits, such as cost savings and job creation, to maintain public support.

Five Key Findings

  • Strong Support for ‘America First,’ but Climate Action Retains Bipartisan Appeal
  • Public Investment in Climate and Infrastructure Faces a Messaging Challenge
  • Germany’s Cross-Party Consensus on Debt Brake Reform and Regional Investment
  • ‘Bidenomics’ Lacks Public Awareness but Retains Moderate Support
  • Transatlantic Ties Remain Strong, but Value-Based Alignment Weakens

Methodology

The survey was conducted twice—first in early 2024 and again at the turn of 2024/2025—capturing shifts in sentiment following two pivotal events: Donald Trump’s election in the U.S. and the collapse of Germany’s traffic-light coalition government. The two nationally representative online surveys, conducted by Ipsos GmbH, each polled 1,500 residents in the U.S. and Germany. The first survey ran from February 19 to March 5, 2024, while the second took place from December 23, 2024, to January 13, 2025.

Authors

Florian Ranft is a member of the Executive Board and Head of “Green New Deal” at Das Progressive Zentrum. In his role, he works on social, regional, democratic and economic transformation issues in Germany and Europe and leads the project “Transatlantic Dialogue on the Industrial Heartlands.” Florian is co-author of studies and discussion papers such as Mir reicht’s BÞrger (2023), Die Übergangenen – Strukturschwach & Erfahrungsstark (2022), or Tech with Society (2020) and is co-editor of Work in the Digital Age: Challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018). He directs the major international conferences and seminars of Das Progressive Zentrum, such as the Progressive Governance Summit and the Progressive Ecnomics Network. He regularly comments on current domestic and foreign policy issues (e.g. in taz, the Jacobin, New Statesman). Previously, he was Head of Policy and International at Policy Network and Senior Research Analyst at the Centre for Progressive Policy, two London-based think tanks. Prior to that, he taught and researched political sociology and international politics at the universities of Frankfurt and Greifswald. Florian is Visiting Research Fellow with the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University, London.

Axel Ruppert is project manager overseeing international projects on socio-ecological transformation in the focus areas “Green New Deal” and “Resilient Democracy” of Das Progressive Zentrum. Previously, Axel worked in Brussels at the office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and at the European Network of Equality Bodies (EQUINET) and European Network Against Racism (ENAR). He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Marburg University and a Master of Arts in European Studies from Aarhus University.

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People-centered Industrial Transformation

People-centered Industrial Transformation

 

Intro 

In October 2024, just a few weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the project fellows traveled through the American industrial heartlands to get a first-hand impression of the prevailing political climate and to engage with numerous organizations and individuals who are deeply involved in shaping the future of these industrial heartlands.

The meetings in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities in these regions, allowing the project fellows to summarize their findings in policy papers that provide actionable recommendations for policymakers and change makers in both the United States and Germany.

 

Climate, Work & Innovation

A people-centered industrial transformation can serve as a unifying, nonpartisan cause for policymakers in the United States and Germany, ensuring that structural change benefits the majority while enhancing economic resilience. Industrial heartlands must leverage their existing infrastructure, skilled workforces, and industrial heritage to drive innovation and create well-paying jobs, particularly in energy and green technologies. Public–private partnerships, regional innovation clusters, and trade union support will be essential, as seen in successful initiatives like the Youngstown Business Incubator, which fosters entrepreneurship, workforce development, and technological innovation. Civic engagement models, such as Erie’s Jefferson Educational Society, can help bridge partisan divides, while philanthropic capital and sovereign wealth funds can mitigate economic risks by reinvesting in key industries and community revitalization. By focusing on these strategies, industrial heartlands can become leaders in sustainable development, ensuring short-term economic benefits, long-term prosperity, and democratic resilience. By learning from U.S. experiences, Germany can compare and navigate its own industrial transformation while further promoting regional collaboration.

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Magazine cover of BKHS Magazine "For a Just Democracy!"

Meet people where they are

Author: John Austin

Residents of regions in long-term economic decline are understandably angry and upset about diminished prospects for themselves and their families and the degraded condition of their communities. In order to turn residents’ outlook from frustration, resentment and distrust of leaders and institutions to hope, optimism and confidence in democracy leaders must listen, understand and appreciate residents’ real worries and frustrations then take small steps to deliver better living conditions and rebuild trust.

The roots of anti-democratic attitudes

Germany and the US, among many nations, are struggling over how to defuse anti-democratic populist movements. People turn to strongmen solutions and anti-democratic authoritarians when they are angry about their lives not being what they think they should be, anxious about the future, feel their status in the world is threatened by change and their communities and life circumstances are diminished.

Cover of the BKHS Magazine, titled "For a Just Democracy!"
ÂĐ BKHS

Behind these attitudes are growing economic inequities, both between different places (e.g. industrial heartlands versus thriving global cities) and within society as a whole. At the broadest level, what is needed is a new round of global reinvestment in people and places that are not finding economic opportunity in a changed, globalised economy and world: an investment in the communities that have fallen from a past prosperity to a current condition where residents feel anxiety over their future prospects. These regions constitute a “geography of discontent”, and they are fertile ground for anti-democratic and anti-system demagogues and movements (Rodríguez-Pose, Dijkstra & Poelman 2023).

Healing our politics

This discontent can be turned into optimism and hope. As I recently wrote for Brookings, when done well, place-focused investments can serve to bring new economic promise and identity to regions – like my own industrial Midwest of the US (Austin & Muro 2024). The work to rebuild local economies is taken up by leaders who want to provide a constructive, rather than a mere rhetorical, response to heartland residents’ legitimate frustrations and anxieties.

Despite the challenges, however, there is much at the nation-state, regional and local levels that can and is being done well to restore optimism, opportunity and hope to residents of still-struggling regions, thereby rebuilding faith in democracy and the leaders and institutions that undergird it. To succeed in this work, leaders need to engage differently with local residents: listening closely, taking small steps that show they understand and empathise with residents’ concerns and showing they are serious about finding solutions to their problems.

Lessons for leaders

Leaders who meet people where they are can win back some alienated voters’ support, and with it, elections. Leaders who show up in heartland communities, campaign there (and not just during election season) and most importantly listen well in rural and small-town regions, while not winning over every voter, can “lose less badly” than many peers who are viewed as being out of touch, condescending elites. Through transatlantic research, we have learned that local, regional and national leaders who truly listen to – and do not reject – the frustrations and grievances of heartland voters, who embrace and also seek to meet their concerns can restore faith in leadership (Austin, Kreuzer & Lungu 2024).

Leaders can succeed when they not only know their communities, but also know what makes them tick. Successful leaders understand the importance of local institutions that are community-defining points of pride, whether they be schools, sports teams, the pub, theatre, library or a busy and clean main street. Leaders who do more than maintain these institutions, but help them to thrive, can find electoral success. Leaders who bring competence and follow-through to their campaign promises, who do the small things such as making sure there is a functional bus and transportation system – these leaders build trust and get permission to do bigger things that can create renewed community vitality in the longer run.

Successful community engagement starts with an openness to constituents, to listen to their concerns, to even “walk a mile” in their jobs and shoes. One example is given by a US Congresswoman who spends days working alongside constituents in various occupations to know what they face in their life and work. Another US elected official – who keeps winning elections as a Democrat in a region that otherwise votes primarily for Trump and anti-system populists – campaigns by parking his truck on the side of the road with a hand-painted sign with the words: “Stop and talk with your State Senator” (Johnson 2022). Successful community engagement and trust-building is about meeting residents with respect and openness.

Leaders like Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester in the UK, focus on people and pay attention to their tangible and immediate needs. As the Mayor told us in one of our transatlantic discussions: “Start with the little things, fix up and get the graffiti off the high street, get the buses running on time and where they need to be.” (Austin et al 2021).

If done well, these small steps build trust between communities and leaders – trust that will nurture support for additional policies and programmes that can move communities forward in more substantive ways, such as with larger-scale investments in people, infrastructure and innovation.

One of the biggest challenges for leaders in communities wracked by job loss is to deal with the feeling of nostalgia – the demand of residents to bring back the past. In part, this nostalgia is very understandable. Industrial heartland communities whose identity and economy were shaped by industry are home to residents proud of their contributions to their countries’ economy and success. People want to be seen and acknowledged for their hard work, not looked down upon or pitied.

And wounded pride is one of the principal drivers of the anger and resentment felt by many residents of ignored and declining communities, which compounds as people feel patronised. Successfully rebuilding this pride can be one of the most powerful boosters of industrial heartland regeneration. Effective local leaders find ways to build on the community and its historic roots to reinvigorate residents’ pride in themselves and their community.

For example, at another transatlantic event, Mayor Francois Decoster of Saint-Omer in the Haut-de-France, the country’s industrial North, described a community renewal process that began with a celebration of their industrial history with a UNESCO world heritage designation. He noted: “We did not do this from the top-down, it was a participatory process. The community asked for and was engaged in the process” (Austin 2022).

Successful community redevelopment efforts build resident ownership. Ownership matters for giving people pride in their local communities through bottom-up leadership initiatives and inclusive participation.

There are other things to do that can rebuild connection and faith in leaders and democratic institutions – but the fundamental connection has to be between people. Leaders who listen to and share a worldview with their constituents; constituents who see themselves in those that represent them. This is the glue that binds democratic societies together.

References

ÂĐ 21.11.2024 | Originally Published in BKHS Magazine „For a Just Democracy!“

John Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center, a center for ideas and network-building to advance Michigan’s economic transformation. He also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution and is a Research Fellow with the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, where he leads these organizations’ efforts to support economic transformation in the American Midwest and in the industrial heartlands of Western democracies. In these roles he has been the author of some of the most influential analysis of the politics and economics of industrial heartlands, as well as tangible guides and guidance for policymakers around constructive actions and change. Mr. Austin is also affiliated faculty with the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education, and the William Davidson Institute within the university’s Ross School of Business. Previously, he served 16 years in elected service on the Michigan State Board of Education. Mr. Austin received a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics & Political Science from Swarthmore College, with High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa.

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Magazine cover of BKHS Magazine "For a Just Democracy!"

Industrial policy for a just democracy

Authors: Matthew Delmastro, Elisabeth Winter

A modern industrial policy can promote a just democracy. Under the mantle of “Bidenomics”, the US administration has launched a new industrial policy aimed not only at boosting economic growth and competing with China, but also at strengthening American democracy.

Cover of the BKHS Magazine, titled "For a Just Democracy!"
ÂĐ BKHS

Industrial policy is the new buzzword animating economic thinking in the US, but also increasingly in Europe and other parts of the world. It makes up a core part of what has become known as “Bidenomics”, or the Biden administration’s new economic philosophy that self-consciously breaks with market fundamentalism in favour of greater state involvement in and steering of the economy. A larger role for the state in economic affairs will almost certainly continue regardless of who succeeds Joe Biden in the White House, as made clear by both Kamala Harris’s and Donald’s Trump’s economic policy agendas (Tankersley 2024).

For a country that for decades has been the epicentre and enforcer of the main tenets of what some call “neoliberalism” or the “Washington Consensus” – e.g. free trade, privatisation, deregulation and state budget cuts – this is indeed a startling reversal, but one which is welcome amidst the multiple and overlapping crises of our time. From a European perspective, much of the debate around US industrial policy has centred on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and how its clean energy and subsidies for electric vehicles (EV) may threaten European firms’ competitiveness and lure them to invest in the US rather than in Europe. But these debates can come across as short-sighted, as they ignore the broader, more positive fact of the US being “back at the table” in the fight against climate change. It also betrays a lack of understanding of the broader project and goals of Bidenomics. One particularly overlooked aspect is its explicit focus on improving the socioeconomic conditions conducive to the stability of democracy. We illustrate how Bidenomics seeks to strengthen American democracy, showcasing that a modern industrial policy can promote democracy by reducing inequalities, delivering good jobs and higher wages and, ultimately, increasing trust in government.

Understanding industrial policy

Despite there being no consensus on the definition of industrial policy, we follow Dani Rodrik and his colleagues in defining it generally as “those government policies that explicitly target the transformation of the structure of economic activity in pursuit of some public goal” (JuhÃĄsz et al. 2023). In other words, industrial policy entails government favouring certain industries and sectors over others to achieve some larger objective, whether it be economic growth, competitiveness, reducing inequalities or bolstering national security. Historically, industrial policy mainly targeted economic and productivity growth in the manufacturing sector, but new approaches have widened both the range of objectives as well as the sectors to which it is applied. States are now using industrial policy to promote decarbonisation, digitalisation, the development of lagging regions and the creation of new, well-paid forms of employment. In developed countries in particular, new industrial policy calls for extending interventions into the vast services sectors, as in countries like the US, only around 10 per cent of the workforce is still employed in manufacturing (Rodrik 2022). The primary mechanism of industrial policy consists in offering incentives to the private sector to produce particular goods or offer particular services. Usually, these incentives come in the form of subsidies; however, many other tools are possible. New industrial policy explicitly calls for novel forms of support, such as the provision of customised business services, job training, improved infrastructure and various forms of private-public collaboration. Common to all these forms of intervention is that they, one, seek to remove the production constraints facing certain sectors and firms and, two, involve some form of conditionality to qualify for government support. Industrial policy sometimes gets a bad rap for its connotations of inward-looking protectionism, but this need not be the case. In fact, it is often used to help make firms more competitive internationally and to facilitate exports.

But for all the recent excitement around industrial policy, it is far from a new phenomenon. On a very basic level, states are always engaged in industrial policy to the extent that they incentivise certain sectors of the economy over others. In the US, for example, this is blatantly obvious when looking at the defence sector and the wider to finance subsidies and protect American industry to Dwight Eisenhower’s preservation of the New Deal architecture and further investments in social security, the US has a long and storied history of robust government intervention in pursuit of pragmatic policy goals. In a sense, then, the recent free market era concerned above all with keeping the state out of the economy can just as well be viewed as an historical exception rather than the rule.

Bidenomics and the new US industrial policy

To best get a sense of what Bidenomics and the new US industrial policy is all about, it is easiest to list the challenges to which they are meant to respond. In April 2023, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave what is perhaps the clearest explanation of the Biden administration’s new international economic policy in a speech at the Brookings Institution (Sullivan 2023). In it, he implies that the administration is proposing a “new Washington Consensus” to leave behind the era of “trickle-down economic policies”. This rethink, he explains, was prompted by four fundamental challenges facing the US.

The first challenge Sullivan named has been the hollowing out of American industry as a result of the old market-liberal paradigm of trade liberalisation and privatisation. Certain sectors like the financial industry won out while manufacturing experienced massive, geographically-concentrated job losses embodied in the “China Shock” of the 1990s and 2000s (Autor et al. 2016). The second challenge consists in the failure of what is known in Germany as Wandel durch Handel: the idea of a more economically interconnected world leading to more peaceful and collaborative relations between states and the gradual transformation of autocracies into democracies. The third challenge, according to Sullivan, is the accelerating climate crisis and the accompanying need for rapid and massive action to ensure a “just and efficient energy transition” that rejects the false choice between economic growth and climate action. The fourth and final challenge laid out by Sullivan is the state of inequality in America and how it has undermined social cohesion and the socioeconomic conditions necessary for a stable democracy. Sullivan lays the blame for rising inequality at the foot of trickle-down economics and a free trade paradigm that promised broadly distributed gains, but which, in reality, massively benefitted the wealthy while squeezing the middle class.

The speech is striking for its explicit condemnation of the previous market-liberal paradigm, one that had gone unquestioned for decades amongst both Republicans and Democrats, but also for its recognition that inequality has had a corrosive and destabilising effect on American democracy. As is made clear, the Biden team has fully bought into the new thinking about industrial policy by seeking to meet a handful of diverse objectives with its economic policies. Under the mantle of Bidenomics, it is seeking to, among other things: revive the American manufacturing sector, accelerate the energy transition, drive innovation, reduce inequalities, increase the power of labour over capital, reduce strategic dependencies and outcompete China.

In concrete terms, the administration is pursuing these goals via four pieces of legislation passed in 2021 and 2022: the American Rescue Plan (ARP), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Even excluding the ARP stimulus bill passed in the wake of the pandemic, the remaining three laws contain over $1.5 trillion in new spending and investment. A useful metaphor for this set of laws describes the CHIPS act as the “brains”, the IIJA as the “backbone” and the IRA as the “engine” (Carey & Shepard 2022). The CHIPS Act is the brains because it concentrates its roughly $280 billion of spending on semiconductor R&D and manufacturing ($53 billion) as well as on America’s overall research and science ecosystem. The IIJA makes up the backbone for its massive investments to rebuild America’s roads and bridges, to modernise the grid for the renewable energy build-out and to finish expanding broadband infrastructure. The IRA represents the engine for its powerful package of loans, grants and tax credits ($370 billion) to incentivise the green energy transition and to boost domestic manufacturing.

Industrial policy and democracy

Industrial policy is implemented in the realm of the economy, but its motivations and effects are also to be found in the realm of politics. We would therefore like to shift the attention to those aspects of the laws that are connected to questions of democracy and justice in order to illustrate how industrial policy can strengthen democracy. Three aspects are worth highlighting in particular.

First, industrial policy can reduce geographical and socioeconomic inequalities in the form of place-based policy, or “government efforts to enhance the economic performance of an area within its jurisdiction” (Neumark & Simpson 2014). It typically targets lagging regions with the goal of creating more job opportunities and higher wages. The Biden administration has been implementing place-based policy through its Justice40 Initiative, which pledges that 40 per cent of the overall benefits of federal investments in climate, clean energy and sustainable housing go to disadvantaged communities plagued by underinvestment and pollution (Daly & Gunn-Wright 2022, The White House 2024). And the data shows that this effort has already been paying off: the massive increase in construction spending occurring across the US has been concentrated in the struggling Rust Belt (as wellas the rising Sun Belt) and, at a local level, in rural and often more conservative regions of the country (Politano 2024). In its recent IRA report, the Biden administration boasted that “99 per cent of high-poverty counties have received funding from the infrastructure law, CHIPS Act, or Inflation Reduction Act, and non-metro communities have received nearly double the per capita funding of their urban counterparts” (The White House 2024). Place-based industrial policy can thus play an essential role in rectifying geographic inequalities that undermine social solidarity and sow resentments among people living in “left-behind regions”.

Second, industrial policy can help to rebalance the power between labour and cap ital by promoting new job growth, higher wages and union density. This is especially important in places, such as the US, where the power of labour has been continuously and systematically weakened since the 1980s. Besides generating new job growth through its investment spending, the Biden administration is pursuing these objectives by offering incentives for firms to pay prevailing wages and to use collective bargaining agreements, such as in the IRA’s clean energy tax credit (The White House 2024). More far-reaching provisions in support of unions fell victim to the legislative bargaining process, such as the proposal to give extra tax credits for EVs produced in union shops. Such ideas were viciously opposed by foreign automakers and even raised protest from European ambassadors trying to protect their firms operating in non-union states (Gabor et al. 2023). A more general component of the push to support labour is the Biden administration’s policy of running the economy hot, or keeping demand high and unemployment low to put upward pressure on wages and give workers more bargaining power. Taken together, these are all pro-worker measures that can help to reduce the staggering levels of economic inequality that sow distrust in institutions and enforce peoples’ beliefs that the system is rigged in favour of those at the top.

Third, and more generally, a coherent and successfully implemented industrial policy can demonstrate to citizens that government can actually solve problems and offer real, tangible benefits to their lives. The Biden administration’s promise is to raise wa ges, create good sustainable jobs, ensure a cleaner and healthier environment, rebuild local infrastructure and to protect the coun try’s economic and strategic interests amidst competition with China. Insofar as these in vestments pan out and people start to feel the positive impact of their government’s actions, it can go some way in restoring the dismal levels of trust in government institutions and politicians. Despite the increases in investment and construction spending, as well the growth of new clean energy jobs (Climate Power 2024), the real impacts of the legislation will take years to pan out. The onus is now on the government to move from the allocation of funds to, in collabo ration with the private sector, seeing projects through to implementation.

Industrial policy, while not a panacea, of fers several tools for strengthening democracy by addressing various forms of inequality and delivering tangible benefits to citizens. It also, after decades of the supremacy of free market thinking, represents a much-needed evitalisation of the idea that the state, act ing in the public interest, has an essential role to play in tackling today’s biggest chal lenges and safeguarding democracy. 

References

ÂĐ 21.11.2024 | Originally Published in BKHS Magazine „For a Just Democracy!“

Matthew Delmastro is Reasearch Assistant at the Bundeskanzlher-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung and as a PhD student researching the modern history of globalisation critiques. In addition to issues of political economy and global justice, his work focuses on transatlantic relations. He has worked as a programme assistant for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Matthew Delmastro studied Political Science and International Relations (M.A.) at the University of Konstanz and Charles University in Prague.

Elisabeth Winter’s work centers on the politics of international trade. In her role as programme director “Global Markets and Social Justice” at Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS) she researches possibilities for a more equitable global trade governance focusing on transatlantic trade cooperation and its social consequences at national and international levels. Elisabeth graduated recently with a PhD thesis on US geoeconomics from Freie UniversitÃĪt where she teaches international trade and US foreign trade policy. As a project fellow, Elisabeth is interested in connecting transatlantic trade initiatives with the needs of industrial heartlands on both sides of the Atlantic. Acknowledging that global rules on trade affect all of us, she aims to identify concrete measures to do so through a human-centered approach.

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Transformation at a crossroads – what is at stake in the US election and how it affects Europe

Why should use the term “industrial heartlands” rather “rust belt” when we speak about former industrial regions in the US and Germany? In this paper, authors John Austin and JÞrgen Hein discuss why the language we use matters and why without careful communication, anti-democratic and populist sentiments may be fuelled.

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Transformation am Scheideweg – Was in den USA zur Wahl steht und wie es Europa betrifft

Why should use the term “industrial heartlands” rather “rust belt” when we speak about former industrial regions in the US and Germany? In this paper, authors John Austin and JÞrgen Hein discuss why the language we use matters and why without careful communication, anti-democratic and populist sentiments may be fuelled.

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Moving from “Rust Belt” to “Trust Belt”: Why the language we use matters

Why should use the term “industrial heartlands” rather “rust belt” when we speak about former industrial regions in the US and Germany? In this paper, authors John Austin and JÞrgen Hein discuss why the language we use matters and why without careful communication, anti-democratic and populist sentiments may be fuelled.

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New Opportunities: Public opinion on the politics of the industrial heartlands in the US and Germany

The industrial heartlands have become central to the political and policy future of advanced economies. There is a political battle over who can speak for the communities of the industrial heartlands; and who can offer a new prosperity for areas that have been marked by the social, economic and cultural effects of deindustrialisation. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, rising prices for energy and housing and general inflation have triggered material uncertainties, alongside challenges over immigration, integration and trade with China, and the need for action on climate change.

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Paths

New Paths to Prosperity in Industrial Heartlands: Report from the Industrial Heartlands and Democracy Study Tour

How can we, economically and socially, revitalize former industrial heartland regions while promoting a green transition? In this report, John Austin reflects on the experiences of the tour, which took participants to several iconic mining and steel regions: Charleroi, in Belgium’s Wallonia region; the Saarland linking Germany and France; and Saxony in Germany’s former East.

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BehindtheAnger

Beyond the Anger and Anxiety: Insights into the Attitudes and Actions that Threaten Our Democracies – and What to Do About It

In his new paper, John Austin delves into the global rise of nationalist and anti-democratic sentiments, particularly in economically declining industrial heartland communities in Europe and the United States. Based on the learnings from the Industrial Heartlands and Democracy Study Tour in November 2023, the paper outlines the reasons behind people’s dissatisfaction and anger. Factors such as economic decline, geographic inequality, social alienation, and political disillusionment emphasize the urgent need for leaders to understand the underlying emotions and experiences driving these anti-democratic sentiments.

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Industrial Heartlands Impulse Papers

After an intensive first working phase on the thematic strands of â€œClimate, Work and Innovation” and “Perspective for the Future, Respect and Participation”, our Project Fellows outlined the issues and topics they will work on throughout the course of the project. They were presented to the public at Innocracy Conference on November 17 where these impulse papers set the scene for a panel discussion amongst elected officials and leaders from the US Midwest as well as German transformation regions.

The future of industrial heartlands on both sides of the Atlantic stands at a crossroads. In both Germany and the United States, 2016 was characterised by the ascendance of right-wing politics, a trend exacerbated by the ascendance of right-wing politics bolstered by a perception of abandonment among the constituents of heartland communities.

In this working paper, through our own uniquely developed lenses, we reflect on the current challenges faced by post-in- dustrial heartland communities and regions, spanning three specific areas:

1. Work and Workforce
2. Democratic and Local Participation
3. The Political Future and Elections

For each area, we address what we believe to be the issues as they currently stand, discuss their importance to the future of the industrial heartlands, and work to develop our line of inquiry as a cohort.

Industrial heartlands on both sides of the Atlantic have been at the forefront of fundamental transformations throughout the past decades and show similar contemporary phenomenologies. Specific socioeconomic geographies, from the American Midwest to eastern Germany, are challenged by surging illiberal populist movements. They face severe demographic challenges and are battlegrounds for escalating culture wars and rural-urban divisions. At the same time, industrial heartlands are bell weathers for successfully shaping inbound structural change. They are home to populations with extensive transformation experience and could, therefore, contribute valuable lessons in the processes that shape the systemic changes underway. This is all the more reason to shine a new spotlight on industrial heartlands, and in the following, we provide impulses on how to do so from a climate, work, and innovation perspective.

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