On Wednesday, International Motors — the truck maker formerly known as Navistar — terminated nearly 1,400 workers at its Springfield, Ohio, Assembly Plant and Truck Specialty Center. A WARN notice filed with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services puts the precise figure at 1,341: 1,314 at the assembly plant and 27 at the specialty center, most of them represented by United Auto Workers Locals 402 and 658.
The Springfield complex opened in 1966 and has operated for 60 years. On October 2 it was formally handed to Canadian manufacturer Roshel, which plans to turn the 500-acre campus — more than 2 million square feet of factory floor — into its U.S. production hub for commercial, specialty and armored vehicles.
The Lisle, Illinois-based company said in a statement that once its contract manufacturing agreement with General Motors expired on September 30, it had "been working diligently to find a suitable path for the Springfield Assembly Plant," ultimately signing an asset purchase agreement with Roshel. The GM pact was the lifeblood of the site: in recent years the plant operated almost exclusively as a contract manufacturer, building GM van chassis and the Chevrolet Silverado medium-duty line alongside International's own CV Series, which is being sunset along with the deal.
Roshel, a Brampton, Ontario-based defense and commercial vehicle maker founded in 2016, said it is "working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process." Many laid-off workers expect to be rehired within six to twelve months as Roshel ramps up.
The White House cast the layoffs as an isolated case, pointing to Honda, Stellantis and aircraft maker Electra's $850 million investment in Ohio as evidence its policies are creating jobs.
The immediate trigger was commercial: with the GM contract gone, International said it saw no viable path to keep the Springfield operation running on its own.
The Associated Press analysis went further, laying blame at the administration's doorstep: the broad tariffs were supposed to boost domestic manufacturing demand, but demand never materialized, and International's parent chose to offload the asset. And the signature legislative win — the One Big Beautiful Bill's temporary exemption of tips and overtime from taxes — meant little to people with no overtime to earn. "We weren't getting a lot of overtime because of the economy," said forklift driver Marianne Donnelly. "There just wasn't any to be had."
Donnelly described the squeeze: marked-down beef, pork and chicken stored in her freezer; cancelled subscriptions to the Columbus Dispatch, the Washington Post and several streaming services. She was not alone. The layoffs were large enough to wipe out roughly a year of job growth across the greater Dayton area.
The timing is what makes the story national: the layoffs came three days before President Donald Trump was to hold a rally Saturday at a nearby high school, part of what he calls a 32-day marathon of rallies to convince the public that the economy is better than people feel. On Thursday, at a truck plant in Texas, Trump declared: "All over the country, they're building factories, plants — manufacturing's coming back. The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations."
Kyle Bos, 30, disagrees. A UAW member with two daughters and a third due in January, Bos held up three tattooed fingers when asked how many times he had voted for Trump — then said he is done. "Something has to change politically in this country," he said. "Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse." He plans to spend the final weeks before the November election knocking on doors for Democrats. When Trump promised $5,000 checks if Republicans win the House and Senate, Bos called it "a bribe, a slap in the face."
Morgan Hughes, 35, bought a house at 21 on the Navistar wage and worked alongside her father. Her layoff means no paycheck for her, her boyfriend and her mother all at once. She and fellow union volunteer JoJo Burkhard have been canvassing in the Dayton suburb of Kettering. "It isn't a hard pitch at all," Burkhard said. Inflation and the economy, she added, have made it easy to swing voters: "Even if they don't want to stay Democratic long-term, they'll at least give the candidates a chance this election."
Only 17% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the cost of living, and the discontent in Dayton is not abstract. Since 1990, the area has shed roughly half of its 90,000 factory jobs after NAFTA shifted production to Mexico, a decline that accelerated after China joined the WTO. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — with 38,000 employees — and the aerospace companies it attracted have stabilized the city, but not its politics.
Ohio's Senate race is now a national bellwether: Republican incumbent Jon Husted faces former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat two years ago and is trying to harness the same disenchantment. Democrats hope to add a Senate seat, a governorship and enough state House seats to break a Republican supermajority.
The November election will test the working-class coalition that put Trump in the White House — in a city that once led America in patents per capita, and where, as Democratic state representative candidate Rose Lounsbury put it, "people don't want to live a life of subsistence. They want to live the middle-class dream and they feel it's not available like it once was."