Trade Worries Led Wisconsin Mill Town to Trump. It’s Still Uneasy.<br />“For a long time, trade hasn’t been fair,” said Jeff Lamia, who started work at the foundry earning<br />$5.35 an hour, fresh out of high school nearly 40 years ago, and now makes $27 an hour.<br />“If Neenah Foundry has to pay millions for emissions controls<br />and China doesn’t have to, then they should have to pay more to export to the U. S.,” he said.<br />Almost a third of Wisconsin’s 72 counties flipped from blue to red,<br />and like most of them, Winnebago is heavily dependent on manufacturing, whether in gritty blue-collar towns like Oshkosh and Menasha or in Neenah, which is home to both factories and corporate offices downtown.
