Donald Trump said he ‘brought back steel’ in Johnstown four years ago. He’ll be back Friday to boost his base.

Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump went to Johnstown and told the working-class Western Pennsylvania crowd that he “brought back steel.”

“This is the place where generations of tough, strong Pennsylvania workers mine the coal, work the railroads, and forge the steel,” Trump said at the airport, Air Force One behind him, in the October 2020 visit. “And you have seen nothing yet.”

The city where steel and iron mills once occupied 13 miles of riverfront up until the late 1980s no longer produces metal, something that did not change under Trump or President Joe Biden.

But it’s likely to get a similar pitch from Trump on Friday in an election where Johnstown is emblematic of small and mid-sized post-industrial cities struggling to remake themselves. Trump is slated to speak at 4:30 p.m. at the Cambria County War Memorial on Friday.

Biden narrowly won Johnstown by about 80 votes in 2020 after Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a similar margin in 2016. It’s a purple city in a red swath of Cambria County, which Trump won by 16 points in his last two elections.

The visit — along with Trump’s recent swing through Wilkes-Barre and running mate JD Vance’s stop in Erie this week — is about bolstering Trump’s support with white working-class voters and cutting into gains Biden made in 2020 now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee.

“We need to over-perform here,” said Bob Gleason, a Johnstown native and former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party who is also an elector for Trump in the state.

“The philosophy of the party in Cambria and surrounding counties is to overachieve like we did in ‘16. The people here have never really wavered in their support of Trump, but the election will be decided on who gets the vote out.”

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Nina Licastro, who chairs Cambria’s Democratic committee, thinks Trump’s blitz through the state’s rust-belt cities and towns signals concern amid Democratic momentum for Harris following the convention.

“I don’t think he’s confident in these areas,” Licastro said, predicting that Trump would win reliably red areas by smaller margins. “I’m not gonna sit here and say we’re gonna win this county, but we’ll pick up enough votes per precinct. I’ve been in politics 20 years and I’ve never seen this type of enthusiasm.”

Biden also made a 2020 stop in Johnstown, where he stood in front of an Amtrak train and told a crowd that Trump had left a “trail of broken promises and lies” across the industrial Midwest and Pennsylvania.

“He doesn’t have a plan to help you get back on your feet or deliver relief to the people who most need the help,” Biden said.

Very little has substantially changed in Johnstown, following either Trump’s or Biden’s terms in the White House.

The city best known for a tragedy — the bursting of a dam in 1889 that flooded the city and killed thousands — has a median family income of $33,000 a year and nearly 33% of people living in poverty (triple the statewide poverty figure). Only about 14% of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

“What connects in Johnstown connects across the nation. People are complaining about the cost of gas and groceries … their paychecks and their pensions,” Cambria County GOP chair Jackie Kulback said.

Trump’s popularity rose in areas where he made broad-scale promises to restore long-retired industry. While both Trump and Harris have said they’d support tariffs to protect American manufacturing, there’s little substantial policy from either candidate that directly addresses the existing economic plight in former industrial areas.

Trump has been an outspoken supporter of fracking. Harris supported a ban on fracking in 2019 as a presidential candidate, but her 2024 campaign says she no longer holds that stance.

“If we want to see a resurgence of any kind in heavy industry … a huge component is the cost of production and that’s where keeping energy costs down is huge,” Kulback said.

Trump likely previewed some of his remarks in an economic speech in York last week, slamming Harris as “the job killer-in-chief” for past support for a fracking ban. He also reiterated his opposition to the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese conglomerate Nippon Steel, which Biden also opposed.

Johnstown received money from both Biden’s American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law, resulting in several projects completed in the last two years. But Gleason doesn’t see that work translating to voters. And a recent New York Times report showed that Blue Wall states like Pennsylvania had not experienced the job spurt occuring in other parts of the country. In Cambria County there were 6% fewer jobs in 2023 than there were in 2019.

“Of course, the money came but it hasn’t had any impact around here,” Gleason said. “And Republicans have done a nice job of twisting that around and saying that’s caused inflation. So what people really understand is their money’s not going any further.”

A key question for Trump’s path in Pennsylvania is whether Harris can match or grow the support that Biden received in rural and exurban areas. The Harris campaign has suggested that focusing on more Republican areas is part of its strategy in the state.

“People like to categorize places outside of big cities like maybe we wouldn’t like a woman or a person of color. I don’t believe that’s true,” Licastro said. “People felt like they were in this holding pattern of Trump-Biden, you felt pigeonholed.”

And Licastro thinks Harris, who is endorsed by the Steelworkers union and has a wide breadth of labor support, has working-class appeal. “Growing up, having parents who are divorced, moving around, trying to better yourself, working at McDonald’s in high school, it’s relatable.”

Bernie Hall, the director of United Steel Workers, District 10, which represents Pennsylvania steelworkers, reiterated his union’s support for Harris this week.

“Workers need leaders who share their values,” Hall said in a statement. “Donald Trump spent his whole term talking about infrastructure, but unlike the Biden-Harris administration, he never delivered. He talked about jobs, but unlike the current administration’s work to develop a badly needed industrial policy, his signature achievement was a giant tax break for his billionaire buddies.”

But Kulback called Harris undefined and broadly disliked in Cambria County.

“What does she really stand for? It’s all unicorns and butterflies. There’s no substance. And to be honest, she is just not relatable to the average voter in Cambria County.”