Trump policies spur economic anxiety in US Republican heartland: ‘Tariffs are affecting everything’

Rural US towns reel as policies like tariffs cause global manufacturing companies to reconsider major investment projects

For decades, a line of storefronts in Jeffersonville, Ohio, a town of 1,200 people 40 minutes south-west of Columbus, lay empty.

But now locals are hard at work renovating the downtown and paving streets in anticipation of a potential economic boom fueled by a huge new electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant.