President Donald Trump has touted plans for a massive $4 billion aluminum smelting plant in the small town of Inola, Oklahoma, as a prime example of his administration’s efforts to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Instead, the project is demonstrating a pitfall in populist economics. Promising to restore industrial jobs is popular in the abstract, but the reality on the ground is more complicated, even in a state Trump won by more than 30 points.
