MARSHALL, MICH. – On a gusty morning in a quaint central Michigan town, the sun’s glow hits the brightly coloured mural on the side of a brick constructing. It reads, in daring letters, “GREETINGS FROM MARSHALL.”
The sidewalk is lined with attractive shops like Living MI, where owner Caryn Drenth arranges a stack of graphic tees amid rows of gift-worthy trinkets. Across the road at Marshall Hardware, store manager, David Miltenberger places two flags — the American flag and one for Marshall High School’s Red Hawks — in flag pole holders adjoined to an exterior wall.
A couple of five-minute drive past an antique store, a book shop and a retro pharmacy is a large field where construction has begun. Piles of dirt and a fleet of cement trucks are the primary signs of what is to come back: A recent $3.5 billion Ford plant that may employ 2,500 staff making batteries for electric vehicles.
Ford was initially considering sites outside of the U.S. for the ability but was lured to Michigan partly because of latest federal tax credits for electric vehicles and batteries that were a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ford ultimately landed in Marshall, a town with slightly below 7,000 residents.
A 12 months ago, President Joe Biden signed the IRA, a broad-ranging environmental, tax and health care package he promised would bring back jobs to the U.S. Since then, he and other Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have touted the law’s impacts as a key to winning the presidency and Congress in 2024.
Pros and cons
Yet on the bottom in Marshall, where the location is being prepped for construction to start, the fact is rather more complicated. Excitement for the location is paired with concerns about how life in a captivating small town could change with the introduction of a significant industry.
Many business owners, including Derek Allen, who runs a non-profit in Marshall, are praising the brand new factory as a option to ensure economic stability. Allen said the town has lost 2,000 jobs in recent times as corporations downsized or moved elsewhere. Covid also took a toll on lots of the small businesses. The announcement of the brand new plant in February was “an enormous boost in morale down here,” Allen said while in Serendipity and The Brew, a neighborhood coffee and residential goods store.
“I just feel so excited and blessed that that is coming to our community, and the companies like this one will thrive for who knows how long due to it,” Allen said.
Not everyone seems to be as confident that the change shall be good for Marshall.
At a May meeting where city council members voted to re-zone the 741 acres the ability shall be built on, lots of of residents attended to talk each for and against the project in a gathering that dragged until 2 a.m. the following day. Concerns ranged from environmental protections to Ford’s partnership with a Chinese battery company, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., to provide the batteries.
The dissent will be seen within the neighborhood closest to the location of the long run factory.
Yard signs dot the neighborhood reading: “Stop the Megasite, Save Historic Marshall.” At a close-by intersection, a homemade wood sign was stenciled with the words “CHINA FORD” with an arrow pointing to the location.
General view of a mural in downtown Marshall, Michigan, Aug. 31, 2023.
Karen James Sloan | CNBC
Although Ford has tried to reassure residents that they’ll own the ability and the land, and that they’ll take steps to guard the environment, not everyone seems to be convinced.
Emma Ruedisueli, who lives and grew up in Marshall, said the development has been jarring, especially for many who benefit from the rural fields in town’s outskirts and don’t need to see industry move in.
“For our little small town, it has been a bit disruptive,” she said. “More voices are heard in regards to the lack of land.”
Political implications
Marshall is the country seat for Calhoun County, which voted for Donald Trump with 55% of the vote in 2020. The county also backed Trump in 2016, but voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008.
Biden and Democrats are hoping to win the support of voters in swing districts like Marshall partly by touting the economic impacts of major laws just like the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden and his cabinet have crossed the country highlighting the advantages of the laws, but getting voters to equate a dirt-filled lot with a law signed in D.C. is difficult. A July poll from the Washington Post-University of Maryland found seven in ten Americans had heard only just a little or nothing in any respect in regards to the recent law.
Drenth, who owns several small businesses in downtown Marshall, said most residents don’t equate the brand new factory with federal funding but fairly the $1.7 billion in incentives and tax breaks offered by Michigan’s state government.
“Most of the local people is targeted on the Michigan incentives,” she said. “I do not think the federal [incentives] have really hit the wires around here.”
Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who’s running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, said she often corrects individuals who think President Donald Trump was accountable for recent jobs.
“I’ve sat with people in my very own town who’ve said, ‘We’re so thrilled to see all this recent development, thank God, President Trump brought us that.’ And I said, ‘That wasn’t Trump. Trump talked about it. But he didn’t do it. Biden did it,’ ” Slotkin said.
Republican challengers running for office aren’t shying away from criticizing the law, at the same time as it brings in recent jobs. Michael Hoover, one in every of two Republican candidates who’ve announced for the Michigan Senate race, compared the brand new Ford factory to Solyndra, a solar panel start-up that received greater than $500 million in government funding before going bankrupt.
“That is taking taxes out of the working class, and telling them that you will hand that cash over to Ford Motor Company in order that they can construct a plant they usually could make billions of dollars. This will not be how the country is supposed to work,” Hoover said.
How the plant will ultimately impact Marshall and its politics stays to be seen. The plant won’t be complete until 2026, further complicating the flexibility for Democratic candidates to message on recent jobs that do not yet exist. But Allen said just the actual fact the event is coming could have a job in how people vote – although the impact could go either way.
“There are folks who will credit Democrats with the economic development that is happening in the realm, and we’ll vote that way,” Allen said, before adding, “I feel there are folks who’re possibly upset about it too, who possibly will vote the opposite way.”
