But again, Trump will not bring the coal industry back. He can’t. The energy industry isn’t going that way. He can’t continue to win the favor of the rust belt when they can look at his record and see that he didn’t do squat for them. When he got elected, they thought he might; or at least thought there was a better chance he would than that Hillary would. But he won’t, and in 3 years, they will see that.
He got elected in part as a protest candidate, but as an incumbent, he can’t do that. In 2016 he had no record other than being a businessman. But now he is a politician, and he can’t oppose the status quo when he is the status quo.
Trump can distract his base from lack of industrial jobs by creating scapegoats such as immigrants, or the media, or the GOP establishment. He can just claim he was impeded in his agenda by the Washington elite and fake news. It wouldn’t be hard for him to get reelected as long as he keeps that one third loyal to him for the next three years.