The folks at Brookings released a report Monday on the importance of exports to the economies of Great Lakes cities.
Among the findings:
- Exports support 1.95 million jobs in Great Lakes metros
- Cities in this region have some of the highest volumes (dollar-wise) of exports and the greatest reliance on exports. Out of the nation’s top 100 metro areas, Chicago ranks third and Detroit ranks ninth in total dollar volumes of exports. Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Indianapolis all rank in the top 20, the study states.
How does your city compare?
“Now …

Has anyone seen the HBO Movie The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant?
It looks like it came out last year, so I’m a little late on this one. It is focused on the last few months of a plant in Moraine, Ohio (near Dayton).
-KG

What can Las Vegas learn from the Rust Belt? Quite a bit, according to this article in the Las Vegas Sun.
Not to toot our own horn, but this story references Rust Wire, and our own Angie Schmitt!
I thought this story was well-written, and made an interesting comparison: though many wouldn’t think of it this way, Las Vegas and Detroit are both one-industry towns - Vegas’ industry of course, being tourism.
The author definitely did his homework- and talked to a number of knowledgeable folks in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Boston and elsewhere.
I …

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this Wall Street Journal article that traces the story of one home in the Motor City - and through that house, decades of history and change in the neighborhood and the city overall.
Spend a few minutes reading about 1626 W. Boston Boulevard, in Detroit’s Boston-Edison neighborhood, from its auto-industry origins to a subprime borrower.
-KG

We’ve written before on this blog that we were encouraged by Time Magazine’s declaration that it intended to devote resources to covering what is happening in Detroit.
Writes Time publisher John Huey,
“we believe that Detroit right now is a great American story. No city has had more influence on the country’s economic and social evolution. Detroit was the birthplace of both the industrial age and the nation’s middle class, and the city’s rise and fall — and struggle to rise again — are a window into the challenges facing all of …

Two interesting items in this month’s Harper’s Magazine:
End of the Road, a piece about how the decline of the Big Three is linked to declining blue-collar wages and job security, and
These Mean Streets, photos of “scenes from the abandoned city”
Neither is available online unless you are a subscriber, so you’ll have do it the old fashioned way and to pick up a magazine if you want to look at these.

This Wall Street Journal story highlights the struggle many people in Michigan face as auto jobs disappear.
The share of Michigan residents under 65 using public insurance such as Medicaid rose to 22% last year, from 11% a decade earlier, WSJ reports.
“These cutbacks, in turn, are devastating the health-care sector. Now the state’s largest employer, health-care providers have swung from profit to loss. Hopes are fading that Michigan’s hospitals and clinics can offset the car industry’s decline: Even as waves of former auto workers are retraining as nurses, dental hygienists and …

Two recent articles in the Detroit Free Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette point out, the steel industry has truly taken a beating in this recession.
According to the Free Press, “The steel industry has been hit hard by the recession and the automotive industry’s turmoil, prompting the United Steelworkers to become leading national advocates for federal support of the automotive industry.”
It continues, “U.S. steel plants are operating at 38% of capacity, and tire plants are operating at about 50% of capacity, said Leo Gerard, president of United Steelworkers.”
The union president told the …

Chrysler will soon be closing almost 800 of its dealerships.
Those on the chopping block represent almost 25 percent of the company’s dealers, the Detroit Free Press reports. “Some of the 789 dealerships slated to close have survived world wars, recessions and Chrysler’s 1981 federal loan guarantee. Many are family owned.”

An economic slump.
Detroit and the auto industry in crisis.
The country taking a hard look at its dependence on foreign oil.
No, I’m not talking about the current crisis we’re engulfed in. Author David Halberstam described this very situation in his 1986 work The Reckoning.