In hometown speech, Vance touts $1B Ohio steel investment, urges voters to back GOP in midterms

Vice President JD Vance returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 21 to announce a $1 billion investment in a local steel plant and urge voters to support Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections during a wide-ranging speech. 

Speaking at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Works facility, Vance argued that President Donald Trump’s tariffs, immigration crackdown, and energy policies have helped revive industrial communities neglected by political leaders for decades. 

“The future of America, the future of the United States, the future of our homes and communities is going to be built right here in Middletown, Ohio,” Vance said.

The appearance held personal significance for Vance, who repeatedly spoke about his grandfather, James Vance, a welder who worked at the plant — then known as Armco Steel — for nearly 40 years. 

“Papaw was a welder in this place for 40 years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States,” Vance said. “It's an amazing thing.”

Vance said Cleveland-Cliffs’ $1 billion investment in its Middletown Works facility would “protect and create tons of new jobs,” modernize the plant’s blast furnace, introduce new technology to optimize its operation, and improve local air quality.

Despite claims from the “far left” that the country cannot have both industry and “clean air and water,” Vance said the upgraded facility would demonstrate otherwise. 

“You can have both of it, and you can have it in spades with smart leadership,” he said.

Cleveland-Cliffs announced in a news release the same day that the company and the Department of Energy would each contribute $500 million to the project. The investment will protect 2,300 jobs and support more than 1,500 construction workers at its peak, according to the release.

The four-year project will include upgrades to the plant’s blast furnace, material-handling infrastructure, and artificial intelligence-based process controls, the release stated. The company also plans to build a facility that will capture blast-furnace gas and use it to produce electricity and steam on-site, reducing the plant’s reliance on outside power. Construction is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks.

Vance added during his announcement that the administration’s economic agenda is not “just about what happens in the factory” or “in the office.” 

“We don’t just want you to have a good job, as much as I very much want that for every single person in this room,” he said. “I want you to have peace, and I want you to have security, and I want you to have the real freedom that comes along with knowing that you are the lord of your own manor.”

Vance blames free trade, open borders for industrial decline

Vance used much of the speech to contrast Trump’s economic agenda with the free-trade and immigration policies he said leaders of both parties had embraced over the previous four decades.

“They spent the last 40 years telling you it didn’t matter if we made things right here or whether we made them in overseas countries,” Vance said.

Vance’s grandfather, he noted, “hated the politicians who ignored this place” and those “who saw this as the place of the past.”

“They said it was irrational, sentimental, old-fashioned to want to preserve the things that make the United States of America special,” Vance said of those leaders. “What we really needed, they said, was to compete and have complete market integration with every nation of the third world — places where you could pay wages at pennies on the dollar, but didn't have to give your workers health care or good benefits in the process.”

The vice president argued that outsourcing devastated towns such as Middletown and that illegal immigration and drug trafficking fueled the opioid epidemic that struck working-class communities across the country.

“The blood of these men and women, these so-called deaths of despair — I'm sure you've heard that phrase, but it's almost too abstract for me, because the blood of those people, in my view, it pools at the feet of those who would sell out their country for a cheap bottom line,” Vance said.

He added that politicians and “frankly, the cronies in the private sector” were “happy to build overseas,” while they “got rich and communities like this one got poor.”

He credited the Trump administration with encouraging companies to build factories in the U.S., protecting American industries through tariffs, and reducing competition from workers in the country illegally.

Vance said the U.S. had gained 83,000 factory-construction jobs since Trump returned to office and more than 29,000 manufacturing jobs so far in 2026. He also said manufacturing wages had risen 4.2% over the previous year.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re making progress on all the things that matter the most,” he said.

Vance rallies support for Ohio Republicans

The speech also served as a campaign appearance for Ohio Republicans ahead of the November elections. Vance endorsed incumbent Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, both Republicans who attended the event.

Vance portrayed the modern Democratic Party as disconnected from the union workers his grandfather once identified with.

“This is not, unfortunately, JFK or FDR’s Democrat Party,” he said. “Hell, it’s not even Bill Clinton’s Democrat Party. This is the party of diversity quotas rather than opportunity for all. This is the party — the Democrat Party — of graduate students, rather than the union and non-union workers who make this facility run.”

Vance said Republicans would prioritize American workers, taxpayers, public safety, and domestic manufacturing. Democrats, he argued, had repeatedly put illegal immigrants, foreign workers, and companies that moved production overseas ahead of American citizens. 

Reflecting on the country’s history, Vance said Americans had built the nation “together as one American family, black and white, rich and poor.” 

“Whether you've been in this country for 10 seconds or whether your family has been in this country for 10 generations, think about it,” he said. “Every accomplishment of American greatness has a long line of people, many of them who don't get their part in the story, but we all know we're very much part of it.”

The vice president closed by urging Ohio voters to support candidates who share the administration’s agenda, such as Husted and Ramaswamy.

Vance said, “I ask you — each and every one of you — to stand on your own conscience, to vote for patriots, to vote for people who are going to fight for you.”