Boarded up windows and broken promises haunt Monessen, the town Donald Trump pledged to rebuild

Shortly before the 2016 election, Donald Trump appeared like a messiah in the heart of Western Pennsylvania’s beleaguered steel country, bringing a message of hope to people who had none.

In the small, unemployment-ravaged city of Monessen the townsfolk went wild. Hundreds of lifelong Democrats joined the Trump train.

"We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country,” the future president told them. "This will create massive numbers of jobs."

In the days that followed, Trump signs sprouted up in gardens, then spread to other blighted former steel towns across the Mon Valley, a Democratic bastion south of Pittsburgh.

It helped Mr Trump win this crucial state by just 0.72 per cent, and with it the White House.

Mr Trump had been invited to Monessen by the mayor, Lou Mavrakis, a Democrat former steel union official. He wrote to the Trump campaign after Hillary Clinton, and before that Barack Obama, ignored his letters.

The speech was "extraordinary," Mr Mavrakis told me fervently in 2016. "He gave people a shred of hope."

But four years later, Mr Trump is no longer seen as the saviour of Monessen. And Mr Mavrakis is no longer the mayor. He was turfed out by the electorate, partly because of his early enthusiasm for the president.

Now, even Mr Mavrakis has turned on Mr Trump. I found him sitting on his porch, on the outskirts of town with a "Biden-Harris" sign on his lawn. He did not mince words, calling the president a "son of a b---h".

"Trump came here and he made wild promises," Mr Mavrakis, 82, said. "He was lying about bringing steel back. He lies every day. He lies about the virus. He lies when he opens his mouth. The guy is a pathological liar...Jesus Christ, I thought I'd seen it all.

He added: “People have wised up around here. Pennsylvania's going to go for Biden."

The city was already dying when Mr Trump came to Monessen that summer's day four years ago. And it has died a little more since.

Nestled in a scenic bend in the Monongahela River, it was once a boom town of over 20,000. Nearly half of its people worked in the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel mill.

The mill closed in the late 1980s, and there are less than 7,500 souls left. Hollywood used the mill to film the movie Robocop before it was largely torn down.

Driving into town a week before the 2016 election, along potholed roads, I passed abandoned clapboard houses, barely visible through the weeds.

A large former sewing factory was empty, all its 20 windows smashed. Half the shops in the high street were derelict. Billy T's bar and the only hotel, the Okay Lodge, were boarded up too.

I remember there was one word that would elicit unprintable responses from people in Monessen then - "Nafta". They blamed the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, signed by Bill Clinton in 1993, for sending their jobs overseas.

Mr Trump railed against Nafta, calling it the worst trade deal in history, and vowed to terminate it, or renegotiate the substance with Mexico and Canada. It was a big part of his appeal in steel country.

Following his election things initially seemed to be on the up in Monessen.

One hundred days after Mr Trump’s inauguration I checked in with Mr Mavrakis, who was elated.

"I’ve done it, I've finally sold City Hall!” he told me, hopping out of his chair. “It’s the Trump effect. He put places like this on the map."

They had been trying to sell it for years to plug the debt.

That same day Mr Trump said he wanted to mark his 100 days in office by "terminating Nafta". However, following phone calls from the leaders of Mexico and Canada, he agreed to "renegotiate". That process would end up taking until well into 2020.

Meanwhile, Monessen crumbled some more.

In the derelict hardware store the former owner's spectacles still sit on the counter, covered by four more years of dust. Trees sprouting out the windows of the old pharmacy have grown some. The pizza place, Chinese restaurant, and pawn shop are still abandoned. A "Replacement Windows" business has its own windows boarded up. You still can't stay at the Okay Lodge, or have a drink at Billy T's.

When I walked down the high street in 2016 there were still two banks. Both have now closed. One had been there 90 years. "Everything's collapsing," one woman told me. "I have to drive seven miles to a bank now."

Around town there are 500 abandoned homes in various states of disintegration. Many have been empty since the 2008 financial crisis, when people left the keys and walked away.

City Hall, albeit under new ownership, is still empty.

Christine Panepinto, 55, a lollipop lady, voted for Mr Trump in 2016, but was now torn.

"The steel mill's still gone..." she told me. "I wasn't delusional last time. I know everybody promises jobs, it's the same thing every election. But things are worse here now. To be honest I feel disappointed with all of them, not just Trump. I just think we're lost here.

"I'm pro-life, so I don't know who to vote for. I've prayed about it, and I just don't know what to do."

Outside Foodland, the local supermarket, Rebecca Romantino, 53, an unemployed local resident, said: "I hate Trump. He promised to bring back steel. He didn't do s--t. People have a lot of anger for him here."

In Mr Trump's defence he never directly promised to bring the steel mill, or jobs of any kind, back to Monessen.

Re-reading his speech shows he spoke about trade policy, ending Nafta, withdrawing America from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, stopping the dumping of subsidised foreign steel on the US market, and currency manipulation by China.

He attacked politicians who "worship globalism over Americanism,” calling what had happened in Monessen and elsewhere a "politician-made disaster," while advocating for bilateral, instead of multilateral, trade deals.

American steel would again “send our skyscrapers soaring into the sky," he said, and it would be “American workers who are hired to do the job.”

Many in Monessen thought that meant them.

The lack of progress means Monessen, and places like it, looks set to return to the Democrat fold on Nov 3, 2020.

When Mr Trump spoke four years ago here a protest was held across the street by a 25-year-old, fourth generation Monessenite named Matt Shorraw.

This week I found that Mr Shorraw is now the Mayor of Monessen.

"There are people here that feel this is personal," Mr Shorraw told me. "He came and told them he was going to do something and he didn't do it. It opened old wounds about the mill closing and that’s not fair. I don’t blame people for believing him.“

Part of the steel mill still remains as a coke plant, and is the city's largest employer with around 200 jobs. However, it has been idling for months due to falling demand.

When Mr Trump took office there were about 11,300 jobs in iron and steel mills across Pennsylvania. The figure did go up slightly but didn't exceed 12,000. During the pandemic it fell to 10,000, according to statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

In 2018 the president put a 25 per cent tariff on foreign steel, with mixed results for the industry.

On July 1 this year the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA], the successor to Nafta, took effect.

Its provisions include that at least 70 per cent of steel used in automobile manufacturing be sourced in North America.

It has been welcomed by the steel industry, including the United Steelworkers union, which has 850,000 members. However, the union called it a "baseline, not a final destination.”

Mr Shorraw, said: “Four years from now if it does in fact help I'll give him (Mr Trump) credit. I don’t think we'll find out any time soon. I hope it helps, we need something.”

Mr Biden currently leads Mr Trump by seven percentage points in Pennsylvania, one of a handful of swing states projected to swing back to the Democrats on November 3.

There are clearly less Trump signs in Monessen this time round. But the president still has his supporters.

Dan Roberts, 54, has a giant Trump "No More Bulls--t" flag on the front of his house, and his garden is festooned with placards.

One was stolen recently so he has rigged the rest with fishing wire, and multiple mouse traps to snap the fingers of thieves.

Mr Roberts, a maintenance worker and keen hunter, said: "I'm like an eyesore around here now.

"But I believe in Trump. The steel industry is not like it used to be, no doubt, but the fracking's put big paying jobs in Pennsylvania. It's just not in this area.

“I see people in those parts with jacked up trucks, 80 or 90 thousand dollars, and you ain't getting that working at McDonald's."

He added: "I want Trump to win, but I've got a sad feeling they're going to take it away from him. The media hate him so bad they’d put a kangaroo in there."