America’s political realignment along regional and demographic lines has largely followed the decline of progressive economic nationalism. Since the 1990s, protectionist Democrats from the industrial Midwest, upper Appalachia, and the South’s New Deal manufacturing hubs have been steadily replaced by traditional pro-business conservatives, Tea Party libertarians, and, increasingly, MAGA-style populists. That trend was punctuated by the defeat last November of steel-worker champion Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, a bellwether of blue-collar resentment toward globalization and the coastal establishment.
For many observers the upshot was unavoidable: Despite Joe Biden’s targeted industrial policies, the descendants of the old New Deal coalition were now firmly aligned with the GOP and Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda. Yet the perseverance of Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), a two-term incumbent and rising figure in the Democratic Party, as well as other Rust Belt Democrats who similarly outperformed the Harris-Walz ticket, adds a wrinkle to the prevailing narrative. Split-ticket voting still occurs in Trump-leaning districts. Democrats who stress jobs, investment, curbing market abuses, and restoring labor’s power remain competitive in the former industrial heartland.
A likely factor in Deluzio’s electoral success is that he defies easy categorization. He doesn’t have the style, or the background, of a progressive firebrand. An Iraq War veteran and father of four, he is adamant that “economic patriotism” is key to rebuilding his party’s coalition. But Deluzio is also pointed about the economic failures that have accumulated over the last four decades. “I don’t think it’s that the American dream has slipped away,” he told me in an interview. “I think powerful monopolists and big corporations have ripped it away.”
Reviving the American dream, Deluzio says, requires “confronting corruption and corporate power’s stranglehold on the economy.” Above all, that means countering the special interests that precipitated and continue to exploit offshoring. Pennsylvania’s 17th district, which he has represented since 2023, spans several middle-class suburbs and former factory towns outside Pittsburgh—a microcosm of the uneven effects of successive trade shocks. Its divergent fortunes evidently weigh on Deluzio, who came of age amid the false optimism of the late Clinton era. Evoking the glassmakers and steel plants that once dotted the Allegheny-Kiski Valley, he hammers the string of policy failures that began with NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and which still burden forgotten communities.
Some pundits and mainstream economists view all this as anachronistic. The local impact of plant closures may have been poorly mitigated, but what’s done is done; those were the tribulations of a bygone era, and attempting to reform globalized trade just imposes new, painful disruptions on consumers and businesses. Deluzio doesn’t see it that way. He says that the combined effects of monopoly power, industrial decline, and the self-serving choices of “corporate jagoffs” have led to declining prospects: “People around my age and younger are the first Americans since the Second World War who don’t expect to be better off than their parents.”
“Deluzio cautioned against simply opposing Trump’s trade agenda.”
Deluzio’s outlook sets him apart from other high-profile Democrats who have mounted a new defense of “free trade” since Donald Trump’s return to office. Instead of facing the ongoing repercussions of industrial decline, many of Deluzio’s colleagues have eagerly lambasted Trump’s tariffs, hoping that the widely forecasted inflationary effects can become a focus of the 2026 midterms. By contrast, Deluzio cautioned against simply opposing Trump’s trade agenda in a widely-noted New York Times op-ed. While he does not hesitate to describe Trump’s approach as “reckless,” Deluzio has, like fair-trade advocate Lori Wallach, argued repeatedly that tariffs are a legitimate tool when combined with other policies to boost domestic production and support manufacturing regions.
This stance could very well set the stage for a clash with other party factions. In a caustic March floor speech, Deluzio urged Democrats “to wake up and stop defending elites and the establishment.” He was less scathing when speaking to me, but his unhappiness with the party’s trajectory is clear. “People think that Democrats aren’t principally focused on pocketbook issues,” he told me. Deluzio suggests it will take a concerted effort to overcome the mistrust that has built up over two generations. He is similarly alert to the persistent challenge of translating major policies into effective governance. Like the newly-minted “abundance” liberals, he says that “things didn’t move as quickly as they should have” when it came to executing the manufacturing components of the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden-era policy breakthroughs.
Deluzio is the kind of Democrat “Bidenism” was meant to cultivate before Biden himself became such a liability for the party. Before the pandemic’s supply-chain shocks, most of the Democratic Party’s economic debates in the 2010s revolved around issues like tax rates and the scope of subsidized healthcare. The relationship between corporate power, globalized supply chains, and the kind of job market working-class Americans experienced wasn’t at the forefront of the discussion, despite the efforts of a few lawmakers like Brown, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders; hardline climate activists weren’t especially attuned to the mechanics and infrastructure of the energy transition, while other progressives fixated on defending a mostly means-tested welfare state from the libertarian right.
However, when it became clear in 2020 that the American industrial base was far more vulnerable than previously thought, developmentalism and reinvigorated antitrust enforcement—neglected pillars of 20th-century liberal thought—were finally put back on the agenda.
As a co-founder of the new “Monopoly Busters Caucus” and more informal “New Economic Patriots” group, Deluzio could be well placed to advance that synthesis in progressive politics. Versed in the arguments of the Open Markets Institute and other antitrust organizations, Deluzio recognizes the connection between an overly financialized economy, monopolistic behavior, distant yet increasingly concentrated supply chains, and the loss of dynamic regional markets. In this respect, “economic patriotism” is foremost about restoring the livelihoods of left behind Americans—and thus renewing the fight for “economic liberty” that Deluzio says is “woven into American history.”
Geopolitical concerns nevertheless color Deluzio’s effort to harmonize support for domestic industry with tougher corporate oversight. When asked about the historical tension in American politics between anti-monopolism and industrial policy, particularly the use of tariffs and subsidies and their tendency to fuel privileged lobbies, he connects that dilemma to the challenge posed by China’s ascent and its dominant market share of advanced chips and other essential inputs. Citing the CHIPS Act, Deluzio told me it’s critical “to break foreign control of something so critical to our defense and national security.” But, he cautioned, “It’s a problem if we’re just shifting production to America and one company is still controlling so much of it, [in this case] TSMC.” He added: “I don’t think most people want to just have new domestic monopolies arise, propped up by government supports.”
This application of the anti-monopoly paradigm to the role of corporate governance and supply chains in geopolitics is a recent development in American politics. Yet it is in keeping with the older left-populist argument that multinationals’ abuse of lax regulations enriches oligarchs and authoritarian states while undermining workers’ rights everywhere. Even skeptics of his message, Deluzio says, should care about “forced labor, environmental violations, currency manipulation,” and advancing “a border-adjustment tax for carbon” that doesn’t “disadvantage” American industry and workers.
“Deluzio’s politics are a departure from those of both the archetypal millennial socialist and the Vox-style Democrat.”
Still, while these concerns about Chinese mercantilism echo the warnings of left-leaning public intellectuals including Robert Kuttner, Barry Lynn, Matt Stoller, and Rana Foroohar, others in the progressive intelligentsia such as Adam Tooze disagree. Some of these thinkers, disturbed by the Biden administration’s own attempt to “de-risk” relations with China, had cast China as the more promising leader on international climate action even before Trump’s comeback.
Given this divide, it is unclear whether Democrats in Deluzio’s mold augur a new beginning for progressive populism. Despite his youth and two recent appearances with Sanders on the latter’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Deluzio’s politics are a departure from those of both the archetypal millennial socialist and the Vox-style Democrat. As much as that nonconformity could help Democrats surmount regional obstacles and reach disaffected workers, Deluzio’s growing influence is far from assured.
Lately, he has had to weather public pushback for his trade heresy. In April, a party-circulated video of Deluzio explaining how and when tariffs are useful was mocked by progressives on X and liberal commentators such as Jonathan Chait. Along with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, he was accused of blowing the Democratic response to Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff schedule. The Center for New Liberalism, a pro-globalization group, gave Deluzio an “F” grade on its new “Congressional Tariff Messaging Index.” Deluzio, for his part, maintains that most of the Democratic House caucus backs industrial policy. But the party’s deepening fault lines over the future of globalization and the sway of its monied base could soon leave his cohort isolated, as Brown frequently was.
Deluzio, however, seems unlikely to back down. Even as polling suggests that Democratic voter support for free trade has doubled since Trump’s election, he is firm that his job is to represent his region’s interests. In practice, that entails toeing a fine line with respect to industrial workers and manufacturers who may soon judge Trump’s tariff regime as self-defeating but don’t want to resume a trade system driven by corporate short-termism and riddled with dumping, loopholes, and other industrial subterfuge.
Such tenacity could be enough to lift Deluzio’s standing within a party undergoing generational change. Deluzio’s presence is a reminder that there is an alternative to business-friendly technocrats like Gavin Newsom and coastal progressives, who are seen as having one foot in leftwing academia and the other in celebrity culture. If Deluzio and other Rust Belt Democrats can expand their ranks in 2026, they could form a much-needed countermovement against the Democratic Party’s ongoing “Brahminization.”
Although he is not as pugilistic as Sanders or the Trump of 2016 who barnstormed Pennsylvania’s neglected towns, Deluzio channels the angst and anxiety that pervades every region struggling to obtain growth, public revenue, and stable, high-wage jobs. At the same time, Trump’s second-term bulldozing has again created a hunger for a “return to normalcy.” Amid such flux, the future of American politics may hinge on Democrats like Deluzio who resist the path of hyper-partisanship and seek, instead, a new, inclusive nationalism.