America’s unmatched wealth is the product not just of the financial acumen of its investors and businessmen but also of the toil and know-how of its blue-collar workers.

For decades, America’s labor policies didn’t reflect that truth. Workers were forced to compete with illegal immigrants in the U.S. or watched as their jobs were shipped to countries where people work for slave wages.

The result of these policies is seen in the ghost towns that dot the industrial and rural Midwest.

On the 2016 campaign trail, candidate Donald Trump won over working-class voters by pledging to tear up or renegotiate the trade deals that sent millions of jobs overseas. Trump denounced manufacturers that moved jobs abroad and threatened to apply steep tariffs on countries that continued to misbehave.

The media said Trump was selling doom and gloom and trying to return America to its past. But to his voters, Trump’s promise to put America first and to bring jobs back was a hopeful message of the economic renewal that is critical to their future.

Much of the media and political establishment couldn’t believe that a Manhattan billionaire could win over working-class voters. Trump did so by tapping into the idea of the forgotten man: working-class Americans who felt ignored by their political leaders and left behind by globalism.

A lot has been said in recent years about America’s political, racial, and class divides. But very little had been said about the rural-urban divide — except for former President Barack Obama's remark about bitter rural Americans clinging to their Bibles and guns.

Many people in rural areas resent that people far away in Washington make decisions that they must pay for but rarely seem to benefit from. Rural areas have been hit hard by the global economy and by mandates from the federal and state governments that don’t make sense to them.

Most people in power centers are so disconnected from the work done by people in rural and industrial America —whether they be the farmers who grow our food, the manufacturers who produce the products we buy, or the truckers who deliver those products to our doorsteps.

Many working-class Americans felt taken for granted. They felt like the expertise that they have (practical, agricultural) and values they hold (family, faith, community, patriotism) were not valued by urban and coastal elites.

They felt like they didn’t get their fair share of resources, respect, or representation. They were making the things that made America work, but nobody seemed to care.

Democrat Hillary Clinton wasn’t listening and didn’t seem to care. She didn’t campaign much in rural or industrial America or include their priorities in her agenda.

Clinton’s view was clearly illustrated after the election when she said:



If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where Trump won. What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that own two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, "Make America Great Again," was looking backwards.



This is the way Clinton looked at rural and industrial Americans. She looked down on them as backward, pessimistic, and stagnant. We cannot be surprised they didn’t vote for her.

But Trump saw them and gave them the respect they deserved. He acknowledged the work that they did and its importance to the economy. His message to them was simple: Elect me and together we will make America great again. Trump recognized their existence, their value, and their plight.

As a result, in 2016, many labor union members broke with their leaders and voted for the populist Republican. Trump won 43 percent of union households and a majority, 52 percent, of white, union households. No Republican had done that well since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The results have been seen in lower tax rates, fewer regulations, and a booming economy. Second quarter GDP growth was just revised up to 4.2 percent. Yet virtually all experts were telling us that we should just accept the Obama malaise days of 2 percent growth as the "new normal."

Not surprisingly, minority unemployment rates are near record lows. Household income is up and consumer confidence is the highest it has been in 18 years.

The Trump administration has also been holding other countries accountable for unfair trade practices and is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. A new poll finds that voters support Trump's efforts to renegotiate NAFTA by a 16-point margin.

Last week, the Trump administration reached an agreement to revise key portions of NAFTA. The revamped deal with Mexico will help America’s automotive, energy, and agriculture workers.

And Trump isn’t done. As I write, his trade representative is negotiating a trade pact with Canada. But Trump has said a deal will be reached only if it helps American workers, particularly farmers, who have borne the brunt of Canada’s farms subsidies and tariffs.

“We want to make sure our farmers are properly taken care of,” Trump said last week about a possible deal with Canada. “And if they're not going to be properly taken care of — we're not going to do the deal."

On Labor Day, we honor the contributions that American workers make to the strength and prosperity of our country. And we celebrate that those contributions are finally being properly recognized.

Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner 's Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.