President Donald Trump famously told Ohio residents at a 2017 rally that manufacturing jobs are coming back to the state. GM this week closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio — not far from the 2017 rally site — affecting 5,400 workers. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo White House Center for American Progress pounds Trump over GM layoffs

A liberal policy group is rolling out a $1 million-plus social media campaign this week attacking President Donald Trump in the wake of General Motors plant closings.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund, the think tank’s advocacy arm, is hitting Trump for handing out tax breaks to big corporations like GM, even as the automaker shutters plants in communities across Ohio and Michigan.


Trump famously told Ohio residents at a 2017 rally that manufacturing jobs were coming back to the state. “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” he said to a cheering audience in Youngstown.

This week, however, GM closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio — not far from the 2017 rally site — affecting 5,400 workers.

Late last year, GM had reported a tax benefit of at least $157 million as a result of Republican tax reform legislation passed in 2017.

“They’re decimating entire communities,” a 20-year GM worker says in a video that will be played over various social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. “It’s not just the 3,500 workers at General Motors it’s all the surrounding businesses. When Donald Trump came to town and said he was going to fix it — they believed.”

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Over the next 18 months, CAP plans to run a series of ad campaigns targeting Trump on “false promises” showing the impact of his administration’s policies through first-person accounts.

The ads are just the start of a strategy by Democrats to portray Trump as having failed the average worker, particularly in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania where Trump’s populist message resonated with white working-class voters. Trump swept those states in 2016, as well as Wisconsin and Iowa. Trump has since boasted of a booming economy and low unemployment.

But in November, GM announced it was eliminating 14,000 jobs from its North American workforce and shutting down plants in Ohio and Michigan.

Trump expressed his frustration with GM’s layoff announcement at the time.

Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland. Nothing being closed in Mexico & China. The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018

“Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland. Nothing being closed in Mexico & China. The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars. General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) - don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!” Trump tweeted in November.

Democrats plan to argue that Trump policies — among them an ongoing tariff war with China that’s impacted farmers across the country — have fallen far short of this rhetoric on jobs, including in Iowa.

“He gave GM hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts that is the signature achievement of the Trump presidency and what has he done for working people?” charged Navin Nayak, executive director of Center for American Progress Action Fund. “I think we’re going to hold him accountable in all the ways people have been harmed.”

