The Democratic Party’s pivot toward industrial policy under President Joe Biden has few greater proponents than Representative Tim Ryan. Vying with Republican J. D. Vance for Ohio’s open US Senate seat, Ryan, at forty-nine years old, has spent his political career warning that unfettered globalization has hurt Ohio workers and enfeebled his party across the Midwest.

Neither a neoliberal typical of the bicoastal establishment nor a progressive in the mold of the Squad, Ryan’s politics are all the more distinct given his relative youth. As a representative for Ohio’s Thirteenth District, where the small city of Youngstown has served as a regional emblem of industrial struggle and decline, he has been a torchbearer for a long-marginal strand of pro-labor liberalism within the Democratic Party.

A decade ago, Ryan stood out as a relic of a bygone era. While Democratic strategists routinely declared a rising majority of young knowledge workers was in sight, Ryan stubbornly focused on the workers and core industries reeling from trade shocks that had resulted from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and other trade agreements with emerging economies.