Harrodsburg, Kentucky is sort of your quintessential small American town. It has the classic main street with businesses in tall brick buildings lined with flags. There’s even a diner where you can still sit at the counter and the waitress calls you “honey” while slinging hash brown casserole.
At the Olde Bus Station diner, all the local chatter surrounded a big national announcement from the White House, over 500 miles away.
Earlier this month, Apple’s CEO revealed that he would task Harrodsburg’s local Corning glass factory with making all of the glass for the company’s smart phones and watches.
The local Corning factory opened in the 1950s and has long been the company’s center for special glass used in digital technology. The factory always produced some of it, but in recent years, Corning promised more factories and jobs in places like India for more mass production.
“Everybody’s excited about it,” said Ben Bradshaw as he sat down to lunch on Friday. “I think it's great for the area, great for the community, great for the state of Kentucky, not just the city of Harrodsburg.”
Apple says their deal with Corning will grow the factory’s workforce by 50%. That amounts to roughly about 200 jobs.
Bradshaw credits President Donald Trump’s tariffs for inspiring this promise of local jobs. For instance, Trump has threatened to levy 50% tariffs against India alone, where Corning planned to produce glass.
Still, Bradshaw knows those same tariffs will cause some short term pain – something Trump has himself acknowledged, but likens to medicine.
“I think they're seeing that it's going to cost them more money to import it, so why not manufacture it here,” Bradshaw said. “It will be better for everybody as a whole, in the long run. I just think it'll take a little while to get there, but once it's there, I think it'll be great.”
Right now, Kentuckians are cautiously optimistic about recent economic announcements. In addition to the Apple announcement, GE said it would move 800 blue collar jobs from China to Louisville and Ford made a splashy announcement that it would invest billions into electric cars in the state. But to make sense of who or what is driving those decisions, they’ll have to wade through quite a bit of politics.
The Trump administration specifically cited each of these as evidence of a “manufacturing boom” due to the success of a “Made in America revolution.” Meanwhile, federal data shows that manufacturing employment has been trending downward for several years now.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who’s widely expected to try a run for president, has also made sure to appear or weigh in on each announcement, taking care to paint them with a blend of company marketing and his own political colors.
“Over the past five years, we’ve now announced a record $40 billion dollars in new private sector investment, a record amount nearly doubling what any other administration has accomplished,” Beshear proudly told workers on a stage erected inside Ford’s Louisville factory.
Manufacturing employment and wages in Kentucky are higher than they were five years ago. But it’s unclear how much any of this has to do with Beshear and his policies or the Republicans who control the General Assembly.
“These aren't isolated events,” claimed Senate President Robert Stivers in a press release. “After nearly a decade of record growth, we know this is no coincidence, but just the next step. Good policy is like good farming. You prepare the field, plant with care, nurture, and in due time, reap a harvest.”
There is at least one Kentuckian who’s having none of the glittering generalities. He hopes people will see through the red and blue fog of political warfare.
“People should be very skeptical of these claims that they are going to see anything near what’s promised,” said Ken Troske, chair of the economics department at the University of Kentucky.
Citing studies and analysis, Troske says if you look broadly at how tariffs impacted the country during President Trump’s first administration, far more jobs were killed than created.
His critique isn’t reserved just for the current administration: whether it’s the CHIPS Act or tariffs, he thinks politicians should stay out of business’ business.
“Between Biden and Trump, we have certainly changed the role that the government is playing in manipulating the economy and not letting markets function in a sensible way,” he said. “It would be nice if we went back to a world when we let businesses make decisions on market conditions.”
Greyson Evans, head of the Harrodsburg - Mercer County Industrial Development Authority, is excited for more jobs at the Corning factory. He speculates the company is adding jobs at the factory for quality consistency and faster shipping in U.S. markets, but it also probably “has something to do with the tariff landscape” too.
Like any local manager, he wants a thriving community full of happy, inter-connected citizens with plenty of money in their pockets.
He’s hoping that a soybean field can help him reach that goal.
Evans is betting they can turn about 1,000 acres of farm land into a booming industrial zone. Once they close on the property in October, they just need a company to bite. From a narrow path winding through lush, waist-high plants, he points out the railroad tracks and high-wattage power lines on the edges of the massive field.
“Everything that's in soybeans over there is on the site and, as we go over the hill, you're still seeing only a small fraction of the actual industrial site,” he said.
This project is the result of about five years of work and a roughly $22 million dollar bond that comes as local leaders say the area “needs a shot in the arm for the future.”
Evans says President Trump’s bombastic tariff medicine could be useful for Harrodsburg to get another win, but he’s not relying on them. He knows the policies have been mercurial and that “uncertainty is kryptonite” for business decisions.
“It's timely and, I will tell you, from an economic development perspective, we've moved relatively fast,” he said. “But we're prepared to take the time that's necessary to have an anchor tenant that's going to be here for a really long time and create a lot of jobs.”
Evans wants growth, but wants it to be sustainable. Whatever economic change happens here can’t be just clever marketing or politics that could change in four years – it’s got to be real.
“To some people, you roll your eyes when you hear [phrases like] billion dollar investment [and] corporate America. You know, who really cares? But this – this is our community,” he said.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky and NPR.
