On Nov. 8, 2016, Donald Trump managed to pull off one of the most upsetting victories in American history: He defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. Although there are many factors that affected the election — such as voter turnout, the Democratic National Committee hacking and Clinton’s email investigation — no one can doubt that Trump’s appeal to American workers — especially to those in the Rust Belt —contributed to the outcome. The Rust Belt is a term coined in the early 1980s referring to the mass layoffs in the region spanning parts of the Northeast to the upper Midwest States. These states have experienced perpetual economic decline due to deindustrialization in the manufacturing industry, which is primarily due to the massive trade imbalances between the United States and other countries, most notably China. As of today, the United States imports over $347 billion more goods from China than we export, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. This extraordinary trade imbalance is the main cause of this deindustrialization in the Rust Belt; cheaper goods benefit the consumer, but the job loss is cancerous to the American worker.

China’s success in terms of trade imbalances with the United States is primarily due to its currency manipulation. These actions have been frequent, most recently occurring in May 2016 when CNN reported that China set their Yuan to a 5-year low. But what is currency manipulation, and how does it affect the U.S. economy? Currency devaluation occurs when a country deliberately makes its currency less valuable by printing more of it or selling more of it in its economy. Today, one U.S. dollar is approximately equal to about 6.88 Yuan. Therefore, to buy something in America that costs 3 units of American currency one needs about 21 Yuan. To buy something in China that costs 3 units of Chinese currency, you only need about 15 cents. It is obvious that someone would rather have 3 dollars than 3 Yuan. According to a report from Dr. Rodrigue of the Global Studies Department at Hofstra University, China has devalued their Yuan from its manipulated, or floating, exchange rate of 3 Yuan per dollar to 6.88 Yuan per dollar today. This manipulation makes an average basket of goods in China cost substantially less than an average basket of goods in the U.S.

According to the law of demand, the American consumer demands more of a product the cheaper it is. Also, the Chinese would rather buy their own goods than the more expensive American goods. This contributes to the $347 billion dollar trade imbalance that Donald Trump frequently spoke about throughout his campaign. He traveled county by county through the Rust Belt telling laid-off workers how China and other countries have taken away their jobs, degraded their factories and exploited the U.S. through these trade deals. Donald Trump has made false claims throughout his campaign, but his claims about the economics of trade were factually spot on. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representatives, U.S. trade imports with China were up 98 percent from 2005 and 382 percent from 2000. One of the most negatively affected states as a result of these trade deals is Michigan, whose residents lost about 81,000 auto manufacturing jobs between 1993 and 2008. These residents heard Trump’s pitch to bring jobs back to America and made him the first Republican candidate to win Michigan since George H.W. Bush won the state in 1988.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, Ohio, home to some of America’s largest manufacturing companies like AK Steel and Goodyear, lost about 121,000 of these rubber, steel and other manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2015. The Buckeye State also came through for Trump, despite its governor’s disapproval of the Republican nominee. The list of states that lost jobs to China goes on and on. Throughout the primaries and more so in the general election, Trump was the only candidate who seemed to lend a voice to the individuals affected by this in the region, which is why Trump’s message to bring back jobs helped him flip some previously blue states to red ones.

Now, to be fair, although the United States has lost a lot of jobs in manufacturing, there has been a gain in jobs in other sectors of the economy. This includes insurance, financial sectors, pharmaceuticals, retail and agriculture, among others. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently around five percent — half the rate during the Great Recession of 2008. Of this five percent, about 1.7 million, or 18 percent of the 9.5 million unemployed Americans come from the field of manufacturing. Five percent may seem like a good number; however, there is a lot of criticism about how the actual unemployment rate is calculated. In order to be considered “unemployed” by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, you have to not have a job and be looking for work. Therefore, if you are a jobless auto-worker and you have not looked for work for over four weeks because you do not think that you will find a job, you are not considered unemployed. Instead, you are considered “out of the labor force,” along with the elderly, disabled, prisoners and others in society who are not looking for work. Therefore, if the Bureau of Labor Statistics included these “marginally attached workers,” people who are able to and want to work but gave up looking for a job, the official unemployment rate would be at about eight or nine percent.

Ultimately, Donald Trump is now our president, thanks to these Rust Belt voters who showed up on election day. So far, he has been sidetracked through tweeting unsubstantiated statements and passing an array of controversial executive orders pertaining to immigration. As it relates to the Rust Belt workers, some economists believe that his calls for a tariff, or a tax, on imported goods will raise prices for consumer goods and cause retaliation from our exporting nations, hurting all Americans, according to a Sept. 29, 2016 CNBC article. The more logical solution that Trump could enforce is the renegotiation of trade deals involving China and other countries. There are mixed reviews about Trump’s renegotiation of trade policies with China. Some economists like Peter Navarro, a professor of Economics at the University of California Irvine, believe that implementing a more equal trade deal with China and other countries could be beneficial to the U.S.; however, this would raise the price of goods produced domestically due to higher U.S. workers’ salaries, according to an Aug. 1, 2016 Bloomberg View article. Others, like Steve Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, believe that manufacturing in the U.S. is a story of the past and the U.S. should retrain workers to develop skills in other fields such as agriculture and oil drilling. In the end, it will be interesting to see whether or not Trump keeps his word to balance out the trade disparities between the U.S., China and other countries in order to help American workers.