As the Midterms Wrap Up, One Maine Business Keeps Calm and Carries On

WESTBROOK, MAINE – Heading out early on a brisk, bright Saturday morning, brilliant red, gold, yellow trees shimmered in every direction as Maine’s autumn temperatures recovered from near freezing overnight to warmish. It’s prime fleece season in New England and beyond, but Ben Waxman is losing business.

Waxman is a co-owner of American Roots, a small clothing manufacturer, one of the businesses in the Dana Warp Mill, a restored 19th-century textile mill on the banks of the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, a Portland suburb. The firm makes T-shirts, hoodies, and specially designed casual wear, and proclaims its products “Union Strong, American Made, Proudly Sewn in Maine.”

For months, the outlook has been any anything but robust, since the Trump administration launched a trade war against Canada and a shooting war against Iran. “Two of our largest contracts have membership, clients, and consumers based in Canada,” said Waxman. Except that American Roots is not shipping up north right now. It’s just too expensive. “If you want to bring American jobs back, then you have a trade policy, not a slapstick, throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall tariff policy.”

For American Roots, tariffs mean surcharges from their domestic suppliers who ship overseas. “It’s putting on more pressure and forcing American manufacturers to raise their prices,” said the former AFL-CIO organizer who worked in the union’s national headquarters with Richard Trumka, the late AFL-CIO president.

The trade war and irregular negotiations don’t create jobs, he added. “Canada is one of our greatest allies. It’s ridiculous that we’re not sitting down.” American Roots had employed 92 people. “We just laid off 16 people because of fuel prices and tariffs,” Waxman said. “Put that in your story.”

Layoffs are just one threat. Many of the company’s workers, represented by United Steelworkers (USW) Local 366, are legal immigrants. Last winter, a “God squad” of local faith leaders and other volunteers joined forces to help protect arriving and departing employees from ICE.

IN THE EXPANSIVE FACTORY SPACE with neat rows of industrial sewing machines, worktables, and the occasional pile of finished fleece vests, BVOCAL, a Boston-based “protest chorus” sang a cappella numbers with lyrics like “Get your ass out and vote!” to stoke up Troy Jackson’s volunteers for afternoon door-knocking.

The Democratic candidate vying to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins had stopped to rally the union members setting out to canvass in Portland and the surrounding towns.

“Obviously, we got a bunch of fired-up people here today,” Jackson told around 130 coffee-and-doughnut-fortified volunteers. “This is not about going back to where we were before Donald Trump, it’s about pushing this government way further than it has before.”

President Trump recently removed tariffs from nine baskets of commodities imported from Canada, including cardboard and related packing and shipping products; plywood sheeting; refrigeration and freezing equipment; and seaweed and kelp products for human consumption. Collins took the credit for a move to appeal to agricultural interests—blueberry, potato, and seaweed growers in particular—who need specialty packaging not readily available in the United States.

At a press conference following his remarks, Jackson noted that the decision was designed to boost Collins in the election. “I do think that they’re trying to buy people off,” he said. “So, millions of people had to suffer these tariffs so that he could make her look good?” he said. “After the election, what is going to be their reason to exempt those things?”

The Washington Post editorial board was less than impressed. “Buying a Cardboard Box Should Not Require a Senator’s Help” was the headline summing up their dim view of Collins’s latest transactional gamble.

Jimmy Williams Jr., general president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, wasn’t persuaded either. “It’s all a shell game. If you look at the overall economic policy coming out of the White House, it’s done nothing but raise the cost of goods across the board,” said Williams, who represents industrial, commercial, and decorative painters and other craftspeople. “It’s instilled fear in every industry.”

Williams works in the construction sector, and he sees the costs for metal, wood, and related materials increasing, disrupting projects across North America. Of President Trump, he said, “When he plays with those tariffs and says, ‘I’m going to put a tariff on this’ or ‘I’m going to put a tariff on that,’ it doesn’t matter. It instills fear amongst everybody who tries to produce goods here, and that’s the reality of what he does every single week.”

This week, a group of former ambassadors and national security officials endorsed Jackson. Of the impacts on Maine, they wrote, “Maine’s relationship with its northern neighbor sustains jobs, businesses, and communities. Undermining that relationship makes Maine poorer and America weaker. Yet Collins voted to confirm the officials charged with carrying out Trump’s tariff agenda despite their stated intentions.”

Living in a border state means that Mainers have come to loathe tariffs. In the towns that border the province of New Brunswick, residents are apprehensive about how the trade war has frayed long-standing personal and professional ties with their Canadian neighbors. One resident of Fort Kent told AFP, “We’re worried they hate us.”

In the first debate between the two candidates, Collins mentioned that she had secured tariff exemptions for pulp, concrete, and road salt. Jackson’s retort—“You can’t eat road salt”—prompted many Mainers to unleash a flurry of memes featuring Collins with piles or plates of road salt.

Though road salt can be a major expense for cities and towns during a rough winter of trying to keep routes clear, Jackson amplified a key weakness in the senator’s thinking. Maine, the poorest state in the Northeast, has the highest rate of food insecurity in New England, and about half of people experiencing difficulties buying food aren’t eligible for SNAP benefits.

THE IRAN WAR AND THE RESULTING OIL and diesel supply crisis have convulsed residents. Waxman, of American Roots, underlined that Maine is “a cold state.” “A lot of people drive pickup trucks … work in the woods [and] in the paper mills. What’s going to happen when gas continues to rise?” he said. “I just spent $1,600 to fill up my oil tank in my house. A year ago, it was $850. You do the math.”

In Maine this week, the average price of a gallon of home heating oil is $6.05. (Gas is $4.28 per gallon, and diesel is $6.41 per gallon.) Maine Newsroom has reported that the heating oil industry has contributed $242,000 to Collins’s fundraising efforts.

Even with those strikes against Collins, the inevitable response from most people across several Jackson campaign events to questions about the race was “It’s going to be close.” As the campaign winds down though, despite 30 years in Congress, Collins finds herself under siege for her cluelessness and elitism in the face of Mainers’ pocketbook challenges. Those traits showed in her latest ad, which featured Bill Green, a well-known retired Maine television sportscaster, and blasted Jackson, a former logger.

Green noted that “we’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here,” while disparaging the former state Senate president’s qualifications: “We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn’t have the tools he needs to be effective.”

For a politician representing the most forested state in the country, it was a serious miscalculation. Volunteer-run wood banks that offer free firewood in communities statewide are already anticipating a frantic season in a place where 50 percent of households rely on oil heat. Some Mainers have taken to social media to announce that not only are they buying wood, they’re buying cords of wood, hoping to stave off using oil for as long as possible.

The commentary on a working-class man’s credentials for Congress doesn’t help the senator either. After confirming with a television station that the ad was genuine, one former Collins staff member was so dismayed that he proclaimed, “The race is over.”

On the campaign trail, Troy Jackson frequently shares the story that during some northern Maine winters when he was a child, he wondered if the heat would ever come back on when it went out. During an appearance with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) on Wednesday in Freeport, Jackson said, “Yeah, I know what a cord of wood costs, I sure do. A lot of people right now are trying to figure out how they are going to heat their homes—and what a cord of wood costs.”