Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren The last time PETE BUTTIGIEG made the trek to Elkhart, Ind., on behalf of a White House was in 2016, when he was the mayor of South Bend, a city 15 miles west. On that day, Buttigieg greeted BARACK OBAMA on an airport tarmac in South Bend before the then-president visited the city for something of a victory lap. Obama had made Elkhart, the RV capital of the world, an emblem of his economic agenda. The city was the site of his first official domestic travel in 2009 just weeks into his first administration, as well as an August 2008 town hall. At the time, the then-ailing manufacturing hub had seen its unemployment rate spike to 20 percent. No one was buying an RV during the Great Recession. By Obama's second visit, the rate had declined to 4 percent. Elkhart, however, never rewarded Obama with actual votes. The city, like the state, moved progressively more Republican during his time in office. And nearly three years into his presidency, JOE BIDEN has not visited the place even though, by last February, Elkhart had the nation's lowest employment rate: below 1 percent (as of July, unemployment had ticked up to 5.2 percent). Biden’s Cabinet has largely ignored it, too. Until late last month. That’s when Buttigieg, now Transportation secretary, stepped into a black government-issued SUV after landing in Chicago, made a stop in nearby Gary to talk about its airport upgrades, and hurtled back to Elkhart to tout a "manufacturing renaissance in the industrial Midwest." "I think it's really important to demonstrate what this historically low unemployment means, especially in manufacturing centers," Buttigieg told West Wing Playbook in an exclusive interview as he rode to the city. "So everybody gets that when there's a good economy, the finance centers in the country tend to do well. But the real mark of a good economy is whether it's working in places that have been through big ups and downs. And that's certainly true for Elkhart." Standing at a train depot, Buttigieg rattled off a litany of multimillion- and billion-dollar projects coming to the region. It’s part of a larger case the administration is making that its investments into chips, batteries, clean energy and infrastructure are responsible for a manufacturing boom benefitting red states like Indiana. Even Republican Sen. TODD YOUNG said the Biden administration deserves some “credit†for the trend. "They also, of course, should receive some measure of credit for the electric vehicle infrastructure that we're seeing built around the state of Indiana," he told West Wing Playbook this week. Elkhart has been a prop for Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Following Obama's stops, DONALD TRUMP visited in May 2018 to argue that "jobs are booming." That's because RV sales have become a sensitive indicator for the economy's health: Good times mean luxury good purchases. And workers in Elkhart and the surrounding region produce more than 87 percent of RVs in the U.S. and Canada, according to the RV Industry Association. In his remarks at the depot, Buttigieg nodded to "the RV economy now that creates so many jobs." Why Biden hasn’t taken the pilgrimage that Buttigieg did and that Obama made several times is a topic of some speculation in the area. MICHAEL HICKS, an economist and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, predicted that it was something he would do. "This industry tends to be the real canary in the coalmine for a recession,†Hicks said, adding: "The reluctance of the industry to lay off its workers, I think, is a pretty good sign that they expect a recovery in the next couple of years." Hicks said Elkhart is a picture in miniature of the paradox of the Biden economy, one in which a lot of discussion and concern centers around inflation, though the long-term, historical trends are far better. He said Biden could do well to visit Elkhart next spring when RV shipments are expected to again increase — a sign, Hicks said, that the president and his policies helped forestall a long-forecasted recession. Buttigieg, for his part, said he thought Biden would be "well-received" in Elkhart and added that Biden would continue to visit manufacturing-rich locations. "We've gone from a manufacturing recession under the previous administration to a manufacturing boom in this one," Buttigieg said. "And we're just getting warmed up." MESSAGE US — Are you ROD ROBERSON, mayor of Elkhart? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at [email protected]. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!Â
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