Pennsylvania steel workers, wooed by Harris and Trump, remain skeptical: ‘I don’t trust either one of them’

The Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation's industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region's economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.

In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation's political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel's proposed sale to Japan's Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state.

On the ground in and around the city, evidence suggests the move may just work - unions oppose the sale and the administration's position is at the very least maintaining recent Democratic gains in the tug-of-war for swing voters in the nation's steel capital.

Anecdotal evidence and polling point to Harris gaining momentum here.

Unusually in these fractious times, both presidential candidates oppose the deal, backing United Steelworkers International union members across the political spectrum who are determined to thwart a deal they see as a job killer that puts their pensions at risk.

Recent memories of supply chain issues have also hardened US resolve to protect vital industries such as steel.

Still, politics are omnipresent, and the deal undoubtedly will play a role in determining the next president. It comes eight years after blue-collar workers here defected from the Democratic party en masse when then candidate Hillary Clinton said during a debate that she would put coalminers out of business.