OPINION:
In the first half of the 20th century, Midwestern states such as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania, provided the economic muscle of the American economy — literally and figuratively.
These were the states that made the steel, mined the coal and produced the cars, trucks and manufacturing products that expanded the economy into the most powerful in the world after World War II, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s. If it was stamped “Made in the USA,” it was likely made in these states.
Michigan “worked” and Chicago was the “city of the big shoulders.”
By the late 1970s, though, many of the industrial towns in these states were in decline. Steel mills and auto plants shuttered and, as Billy Joel so famously put it in his song “Allentown”: “We’re living here in Allentown, but they’ve taken all the coal from the ground.”
Many of the manufacturing jobs weren’t eliminated. Instead, the factories and plants that had them fled to southern states like Alabama, South Carolina and Texas. These were the business-friendly, right-to-work states that weren’t hampered by union bosses and high production costs.
Meanwhile, many of the Rust Belt towns — including York, Pennsylvania, and Flint, Michigan — have never recovered. Others have become depopulated, left for dead.
But hold on! Maybe not.
In New Carlisle, Indiana, about 15 miles west of South Bend, where the last Studebaker rolled off the assembly line in 1963, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has built one of the world’s most advanced computing facilities. With an $11 billion capital investment, the largest in state history, the new campus was partially operational barely a year after the groundbreaking.
Two years ago, what were empty fields and on the edge of town is now AWS’ Project Rainier, a 1,200-acre data center. It’s the biggest economic development in the history of the town.
Welcome to the new gig economy. New Carlisle won the contract because county leaders created an environment where business could thrive, not just survive.
The construction of the site — seven buildings rising at once and 10 more targeted for completion within 18 months — employed hundreds of workers on a project projected to support roughly 3,000 jobs when all is done. Further expansions could bring several thousand more jobs over the next decade.
Here’s how they did it. St. Joseph County spent $3.5 million assembling land, running utilities and preparing for the new project. They made sure the water and zoning were in place and the transmission lines needed to power the plant were up and running.
When Amazon came looking, officials were ready — and they gave the green light in a matter of weeks, not years.
City leaders didn’t say “Hell, no” to the new technologies and football fields of tech centers. They welcomed the investment in their community. In fact, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has said that he wants the state to be a hub for America to “win the AI race.”
Local officials didn’t thumb their noses at the new industrial age projects and the so-called “temporary jobs.”
New Carlisle has a heartbeat once again.
But thanks to Mr. Braun, Amazon wasn’t done with its Hoosier State resurrection plans. Within months of the new construction in New Carlisle, the company announced another $15 billion investment in the construction of several more AI campuses across northern Indiana.
What a stark contrast to the growing grass roots movement across the country of “No new data centers,” and “Not in my backyard.” Many governors have called for a moratorium on data center construction.
Imagine if Detroit had taken that attitude about auto plants in the first half of the last century.
All of this could be the game plan for the industrial Midwest to pull off an unexpected comeback.
A recent McKinsey study estimates that the need for new warehouses and processing facilities, electric power plants and data centers over the next several decades could reach $7 trillion. That’s the equivalent of another generation of 2 million to 3 million new union construction jobs with annual pay and benefits of nearly $100,000.
Amazon’s $276 billion-plus investment in data center construction has already added more than $102 billion to U.S. GDP while supporting more than 50,000 jobs.
These facilities are not just where the future of AI will happen; they are the future of America’s industrial revival. Instead of making cars, the Midwest could become the global leader in telecommunications, with every email, every online banking login, every card swipe — billions of these transactions every day — running through structures like these.
Hundred-billion-dollar tech companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft are at this very moment frantically recruiting and training the workforces they need. They are turning young local residents — many of whom were unemployed — into data center technicians, electricians, HVAC specialists and other skilled workers. And they’re doing it without saddling the new workers with student loan debt.
Why turn that down? Why tell the economic life raft to go away?
The new industrial age is upon us and it can make the Midwest great again. South Bend and New Carlisle prove it.
• Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic advisor and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, an organization that promotes policies that produce economic growth. Peter Roff is a veteran journalist and columnist who writes regularly about the intersection of politics and public policy.
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