“I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember,” wrote Vice President JD Vance in his career-transforming 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Vance’s rapid ascent in politics, fueled in large part by the spotlight his book placed on manufacturing towns, was quicker than most. He was elected to represent Ohio in the Senate in 2022 and became Vice President-Elect in 2024.
Today, Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Ohio, is facing economic uncertainty anew after an abrupt shift in government spending, the Financial Times reports.
In August 2024, Politico profiled Middletown’s then-ongoing revitalization, drawing from Vance’s memoir and the outsized role its Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant played in his personal backstory.
Vance characterized the facility as an “economic savior,” enabling his family to enter the middle class. The outlet noted that the plant’s prospects stood to benefit immensely from $500 million in federal clean energy grants appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“It felt like a miracle, an answered prayer that we weren’t going to be left to die on the vine,” Middletown pastor Michael Bailey said of the half-a-billion-dollar investment last year. But in April, CNN obtained leaked documents indicating the “miraculous” promise would be broken.
In July, Politico confirmed that the much-celebrated $500 million grant had been clawed back to the dismay of Middletown’s residents and business community, like Chamber of Commerce head Rick Pearce.
“It would have been nice to be the first [green steel mill]. We are disappointed that the newest technology won’t be here and we won’t get the influx of the income tax dollars,” Pearce lamented.
“Middletown just can’t catch a break,” former councilwoman Monica Thomas concurred.
As Pearce pointed out, had Middletown’s federal funding not been reversed, Cleveland-Cliffs’ conversion from coal to hydrogen power would have made it “the nation’s first [plant] to make green steel from scratch.”
According to the Financial Times, the completion of the steel mill’s scrapped conversion would have added 1,370 jobs “to the mill’s existing workforce of 2,500.”
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Local leaders like Scotty Robertson lambasted the decision to hang Middletown’s manufacturing future on fossil fuels, while abandoning globally competitive green technology and clean energy.
Robertson was skeptical that dirty energy was a fiscally prudent investment.
“We would have had new, good-paying manufacturing jobs that last into the future, unlike many fossil fuel jobs,” he told the Times.
In January, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reported another “bad year” for fossil fuel investments.
According to IEEFA, oil and gas stocks recorded “a 5.72% return in 2024, barely one-fifth of the S&P 500’s return of 25.02%,” and overall, the sector underperformed against other stocks for seven of the past 10 years.
When CNN covered the grant’s rescission in April, the outlet quoted former National Economic Council deputy director Sameera Fazili on the leaked cuts.
“You can’t cut your way to economic competitiveness; you have to make strategic public investments,” Fazili explained.
At an individual level, voting for pro-environmental candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will protect investments in a green future — and contacting your elected representatives on issues like clean energy makes a difference.
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