After Iowa officially kicks off the 2020 presidential campaign next week, and after brief detours in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the eyes of the nation will be glued to the people of Michigan and our sister Midwestern political battleground states.
The outsider's view, particularly after the 2016 election, is of a region of hollowed-out former factory towns and rural hinterlands. A place of restless residents who long for a simpler time and our economic prosperity, hostile to immigrants and terrified of changing cultural norms and demographics.
There is clearly that Midwest — communities where globalization and new foreign competitors are accelerating technological change, and automation has led to a dramatic restructuring of the region's industries over several decades, eliminating a huge number of well-paid assembly-line jobs and closing many factories.
But the real picture is much more nuanced. Never an economic monolith, today there are really two Midwests. We have many older industrial cities that have lost their employers and are drifting into a globalized economy. But others have successfully evolved from their industrial and agricultural roots and are winning in a world dominated by technology, talent and innovation.
Most of the region's major metros – from the Twin Cities in the West to Indianapolis at the crossroads of the nation to Pittsburgh in the East – are diverse, thriving hotbeds of knowledge work.
All communities anchored by one of the region's many top-tier research universities (such as Iowa City, Ann Arbor and State College) are thriving in an economic era where talent and innovation reign supreme.
Still other Midwest communities, such as Rockford, Illinois, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Columbus, Indiana — none of which is a major metro or home to a top research university — have found paths to new success by embracing the of economic change and harnessing their unique strengths to create a new era of economic vitality.
An urgent national and Midwestern priority is to strengthen broader shared economic growth so that fewer people and communities feel abandoned, isolated, and unable to control their economic destinies. Leaders within the region, as well as those seeking the presidency, need an effective, positive, forward-looking vision to address isolationism, protectionism and nostalgia as solutions to the economic woes of residents.
This is the vision and plan of action offered by the new report of the Chicago Council on World Affairs: A Vital Midwest: The Path to a New Prosperity.
The council itself was created almost 100 years ago to push back when the region and the nation were facing the pulls of nativism, protectionism and retreat from the world after the seismic shock of the First World War. Today the council is working to reclaim its founding role and offer a positive, outward-looking and tangible new economic vision for the Midwest and our country.
As detailed in the report, the plan to effectively spread economic opportunity, security and a newfound optimism about the future to more people in the Midwest and their communities involves modeling existing Midwestern communities for success. It also entails implementing a set of bold state and local programs, policies and public-private partnerships, including:
Emerging Sector Innovation Hubs: Increase federal R&D investment through innovation institutes in emerging areas such as energy, water, food systems, mobility, health care, and information technology, which will of course be “earned” by our leading Midwestern research universities.
Fund for Communities in Transition: Creating additional state, local and public-private innovation funds. as part of a new federal place-focused economic development agenda.
Green Leadership: Mayors, governors and the next president can set a goal of 90 percent clean energy by 2050, driving Midwestern-based clean energy innovation, new technology development, and business and job growth.
“Employee GI Bill”: Push for state policy leadership and create federal flexibility to allow states to provide a financial guarantee for postsecondary certification for today's workforce, which is at risk of displacement and is concentrated in the Midwest.
Portable pensions and health care: Support federal policies that create incentives for states to develop portable public-private pension, savings, and health care programs to preserve worker security and support mobility in a changing labor market.
Free community-based college: Catalyze community-based higher education funding programs similar to the Kalamazoo Promise through a new federal-state-local investment matching program.
Heartland Visas for Communities in Transition: Support immigration policies that increase the flow of highly skilled immigrants, refugees, entrepreneurs, and guest workers to newly designated Communities in Transition (including the Midwest) and support pathways to citizenship for “Dreamers.”
Today, the eyes of the country and much of the world are on the economic status, attitudes and mood of Midwest voters heading into the 2020 election. This makes it a very good time to discuss and discuss what would be more powerful to accelerate our economic transformation from the “Rust Belt” of the past and spread the emerging new economy to more people and places. In this way, we would help create a politics that brings us together instead of driving us further apart.
John Austin is director of the Michigan Economic Center and a Chicago senior fellow for global affairs, the Brookings Institution and the Upjohn Institute. @John_C_Austin.
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