JD Vance vows to protect American workers during speech at shuttered Georgia textile mill

Adam Beam, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Oct 4, 2024

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LINDALE, Ga. — Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance on Friday said the country under a Donald Trump presidency would “make our own stuff” by using “American working people” while speaking at a shuttered textile mill in Northwest Georgia.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, spoke before a crowd of a few hundred cheering supporters beneath a banner exclaiming “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” that was affixed to what was left of the Lindale Mill.

The mill, built in 1896, was once the center of gravity for this rural community before it closed in 2001 after it was unable to keep up with foreign competition. Much of the mill has been demolished, but a few buildings remain — including a pair of towering smokestacks that support a glowing star during the holiday season. The property is now marketed mostly as a wedding venue and filming location.

“It should still be making great American products, but it’s not because of a failure of American leadership,” Vance said.

Vance said Trump’s plan to protect American workers is to “slap a big fat tariff on everything coming in from China.” The line got a big cheer from the crowd. But a recent report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an independent Washington think tank, found Trump’s tariff proposals could increase inflation and hurt the U.S. economy.

Lindale, which is about a 90-minute drive northwest of Atlanta, got its name from a prominent resident who came across the word in a novel he was reading at the time, according to a local legend. Today, Trump signs dot many of the lawns along the community’s main drag in Floyd County, where Trump got nearly 70% of the vote in 2020.

Trump will need margins like that from hundreds of small communities throughout rural Georgia to blunt Vice President Kamala Harris’ strength in the state’s more densely populated urban areas. In 2020, Joe Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes out of the nearly 5 million ballots cast.

That’s why before Vance spoke, a parade of Georgia Republicans — including Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of nearby Rome — urged the crowd to vote early. It was a starkly different message from four years ago, when Trump falsely sowed so much doubt about voting systems it caused many of his would-be supporters to stay home.

“Make a plan to vote as early as possible,” said Denise Burns, chair of the Republican Party’s 14th Congressional District. “We must make our turnout too big to rig.”

Friday, Vance focused more on the economy by trying to saddle Harris with the inflation that climbed to the highest levels in decades in the years following the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, although it now hovers much closer to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

Asked about Georgia’s ban on most abortions — which was struck down by a state judge this week and is being appealed — Vance quickly pivoted by saying it was up to Georgians to decide.

“What President Trump and I have said repeatedly is that we want our national government to focus on the national issues, close down the border, lower the price of housing, make groceries more affordable for American citizens,” he said.