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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power, politics and society.

On each episode, I will talk to an American expert or an expert on America

about something that's going on in America in 2023. I am delighted to be joined in the

spectators' offices for the first time, a regular contributor to our pages, Joel Kotkin,

who is a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in Orange County, California. Is it orange county California? And he's here

visiting London, and I thought great opportunity to catch up with you, Joel, because you are

one of the most interesting writers, I think, on class in America, on what's going on in American cities.

And a story I thought we should start by talking about is this strike that's going on in America, quite a substantial strike of the UAW, United Auto Workers Union.

And what's been interesting this week is on Tuesday, Joe Biden

joined the picket line and tried to sort of burnish his credentials with the unions. And he is

popular with the unions. Or the union leadership anyway. Union leadership, exactly. Very different.

And then yesterday you had Trump, who is quite popular with quite a lot of union memberships.

And he did an address to some union workers, auto workers in Michigan, which of course is a very key state.

It's a swing state and sort of probably a bellwether blue collar state, could you say?

Yeah, well, and of course there was a time when Michigan was a blue state.

You didn't even think if you're a Republican about winning in Michigan.

Yes.

But that's changed over the last 10 years.

Just like 10 years ago, you still had Republicans in California.

Now they're essentially extinct.

Yeah.

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