FOR too long American workers have been ignored, President Donald Trump declared on February 13th, as he promised to “tweak” trade relations with Canada and to transform an “extremely unfair” relationship with Mexico. Flanked by the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Mr Trump made plain that he stands by a campaign pledge to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a 23-year-old pact underpinning trade between Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Demonising NAFTA helped Mr Trump to the presidency. But in reality millions of American jobs are supported by that pact. One of them belongs to Chris Gambrel, who builds vast diesel engines in Seymour, Indiana. It would be odd to think of Mr Gambrel, a skilled and brawny employee of Cummins, an engine-maker, as ignored or “forgotten”. He is proud of the “world-class” engines that he produces: 95-litre behemoths powerful enough to pull a cargo train. Three-quarters of them are exported to foreign customers for up to $1m apiece.

Free-trade rules, notably those provided by NAFTA, helped persuade Mr Gambrel’s bosses to build the giant engines in Seymour, rather than at a Cummins plant in India which almost won the work. America offered lower shipping costs and less red tape when exporting the engines, and—vitally—lower and fewer customs duties when components are imported from cost-effective suppliers around the world. Add on quick access to American engineers, and the Midwest was the most competitive site. Mr Gambrel’s job involves installing cylinder-heads made in Mexico, a task he carries out with a surgeon’s care.

Elsewhere at the Seymour plant, which employs 1,300 workers, whole assembly lines are kept profitable by supply chains that run to and from Mexico, a manager says; one of the lines “remanufactures” 16-litre engines from parts stripped, cleaned and repaired at a Cummins plant in Ciudad Juárez. Experienced workers in Seymour can earn $28 an hour or more. Cummins pays up to $7,000 a year for employees to study for college degrees. The manager proudly notes that in ten years he can count hourly workers who left of their own accord “on one hand”.

Nor is the rest of Seymour really overlooked—certainly when compared with the bleakest bits of the midwestern rustbelt. In addition to Cummins, steady jobs are provided by Valeo and Aisin, car-parts companies that come from France and Japan, respectively. With a jobless rate at 3.2%, the town enjoys what economists deem full employment. Its centre, while not exactly bustling, is home to popular businesses such as Larrison’s, a diner, the Bite the Bullet gun shop, and the clubhouses of fraternal orders including the Knights of Columbus and the Elks. Seymour is about 85% white, though its Hispanic population has more than doubled in a decade, as migrants from Guatemala and other countries filled low-paid jobs in industries like egg-processing.

From the outside, Seymour is navigating a globalised age reasonably well. Nonetheless it swooned before Mr Trump, and his dystopian talk of trade bringing “carnage” to America. In 2012 Jackson County, of which Seymour is part, gave the Republican presidential candidate, the stiffly patrician Mitt Romney, 62% of its votes. In 2016 the county swung hard to Mr Trump, giving the NAFTA-bashing populist 73%.

Mr Gambrel suggests that Seymour was ready to take a gamble: “People were tired, they wanted change.” Asked if he fears that Trumpian brinkmanship may imperil his job, the engine-maker shrugs. “Trade deals come and go. There probably is a price to pay,” he says. “But I’m far enough away that I’m insulated. And the press blows everything out of proportion.” As for the Mexican components that Mr Gambrel installs, he would like to see them made in America. At root he trusts Mr Trump: “The man’s a billionaire, he’s made some shrewd moves.”

Another Cummins worker, Lew Findley, concedes that cheaper Mexican components may save some American jobs. But still his hunch is that workers like him are safer under President Trump, who he feels shares his values on other questions, from guns (good) to abortion (bad). Seymour’s Republican mayor, Craig Luedeman, says that issues such as gun rights and immigration explain much of Mr Trump’s support. But unlike the Cummins workers, the mayor fears what a trade war could do to his city: “We’re not in a regional economy any more, we’re global.”

America First is a hard sell outside America

Tom Linebarger, the chairman and CEO of Cummins, has a similar message for his 55,000 worldwide employees, of whom more than 25,000 are in America. “Our jobs overwhelmingly exist because of trade,” says Mr Linebarger in an interview at his new offices in Indianapolis. Sales in 190 countries make the firm less vulnerable to local downturns than it once was, he argues. But the flipside of selling to so many countries is that a global company cannot simply manufacture in one place and export products from that hub, as some mercantilists would like America to do. In part, that is because local market conditions must be understood on the ground. But Mr Linebarger makes a subtler point: other countries worry about their own workers, too. “If your deal is, I am good with exports but not with imports, generally speaking most people won’t strike that deal with you.”

As a multinational CEO, Mr Linebarger knows both great power and the anxiety such power provokes. Every time he visits a Cummins facility somewhere in the world, whether in a developing or mature economy, employees “are all worried I am going to close their plant,” he relates. Defenders of an open global order are learning that two hard tasks must be tackled together: trade must be made to work, and workers must be convinced that they have a place in today’s economy. Towns like Seymour—luckier than many, yet still willing to risk everything on a trade-bashing president—are a living reminder of how much is at stake.