Butterfly effect: Flutter of jobs, migration & oil

By: Prem Udayabhanu

A Kerala migrant’s inside view of Pittsburgh’s steel legacy, shifting politics and how oil prices and job shifts echo across oceans

The lingering aura of home and the picture-postcard texture of the professed land differentiate Patoor from Pittsburgh. Much like the seemingly narrow differentiators that set Pittsburgh apart from its northeastern US cradle state of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, in the swing state of Pennsylvania, did not sway to the Red cauldron in 2025, though Pennsylvania did—as Trump triumphed.

Pittsburgh has never elected a Republican mayor in a century. The last time a Republican won a mayoral election was in 1925. Polls are due this November.

The scent of red color, though, is wafting across the boulevards that crisscross Meadowridge in Harrison City as Trump squeezed Democratic margins. Notice how the “U” goes for a toss once you cross the oceanic swathes of the Pacific. Did we hear the linguistic echoes accompanying migration? Perhaps, yes.

Just came across the lingering effability of Malabari slang in Patel’s Indian store at Mall Plaza Boulevard, Monroeville. We also stumbled upon a Tamil family. Telugu and Hindi whispers passed by—speaking loudly is not commonplace here. Official stats about Pittsburgh’s scattered Indian demographic are scarce. These were real people, original migrant stories thinly spread across the demographic spectrum of Pittsburgh’s so-called Rust Belt terrain.

The Brussels-based Migration Policy Institute offered details of diaspora culled from the US Census Bureau’s 2019–2023 American Community Survey. Of the 2.4 million residents of Pittsburgh, 16,000 were of Indian origin. Pittsburgh’s population has since crossed three million (a size comparable to Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, among Kerala’s largest districts). But Pittsburgh’s Indian count likely remains the same.

STEM of knowledge

Stumbled upon a finance graduate—a Mallu-Mumbaikar keen to chase the American dream at Penn State Behrend, Erie. The lanky teen is pursuing finance and business economics at the undergraduate level, sharing a hostel room with a White peer. First-year students are invariably paired with American students in hostels, rarely with another international student.

Few Indians pursue finance, he says. Most flock to their national fixation—science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM), especially computer science or computer engineering. That’s a broad indicator of Indian students’ academic leanings. Nearly 70% of Indian students abroad pursue STEM courses. Employability is the gamble they dabble in when jobs are the sweepstakes.

Conveyor belt of jobs

Jobs and factories were poll issues at the core of Trump’s presidential surge. Trump mocked conventional political wisdom by borrowing generously from the Democrats’ playbook and reinforcing the Rust Belt imagery to lord over them. Rust Belt states—the US Midwest and Northeast—were once manufacturing hubs, especially for steel and autos. These include Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan—with Pittsburgh, a key steel hub, located in the Northeast per US Census definitions. Rust Belt was a contrasting play on Sun Belt states, used to describe booming economies in the South and Southwest.
The term Rust Bowl was first coined by Ronald Reagan’s presidential opponent Walter Mondale. Mondale failed miserably, and Reagan won in a landslide. Trump romped home convincingly, sweeping the Rust Belt states.

It is another story that the Rust Bowl coinage itself was a play on the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when severe dust storms colluded with economic misery to evoke the desolation and rusted factories. Mondale’s insinuation was that Reagan’s trade policies were turning the industrial US Midwest into a Rust Bowl. The term later morphed into Rust Belt, thanks to imaginative scribes who vouched for Mondale’s theory.

Golden avenues of dealmaking

The new dispensation is eager to follow up on Rust Bowl, as is evident from efforts to bolster Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid to run Pittsburgh-based US Steel, and a golden share announced for the US to checkmate the yet unclear foreign, or Japanese, ownership issue. The golden share reportedly includes a clause allowing a presidential veto if the Japanese were to consider shifting US Steel’s HQ from Pittsburgh. That should make the Rust Belt happy, but may worry foreign investors.

As Trump zooms past the golden avenues of deal-making, invoking the magic wand wielded by the US President, by relentlessly escalating and backtracking on tariffs as a negotiating tool and nudging global companies to invest and Make America Great Again, oil prices have increased by roughly $10 a barrel, or 20 cents per gallon—thanks to Israel’s military adventure in Iran.

In the month since the Hamas-Israel conflict erupted, the price of the Indian crude oil basket surged nearly 10%. A litre of petrol now costs roughly Rs 107.48 in Thiruvananthapuram. If you crisscross the oceanic swathes of the Pacific to reach Pittsburgh, you could buy 1.45 litres for the dollar equivalent of that. This is one rare commodity in the US that you can buy cheaper than in India. A chai costs $1.5 at the Indian store in Monroeville.

We do not need the IQ of STEM aspirants to understand that, unlike in our storied backyards, the welcome absence of the burden of cess alone would push oil prices out of the pricey terrain for all and sundry.
For our political machinery, a tax on oil—which you cannot do without—remains the go-to fix for a pedestrian revenue-generation philosophy. The butterfly effect may move oceans and create giant waves. Oceans and titanic waves may spur the flutter of butterflies, if chaos theory is invoked. But the united colors of migration, jobs, stats, and oil may remain unique, distant truths across the planet—perhaps even farther than the oceans that separate them.


(The writer is a senior journalist who has shifted to the US)
Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Doctor's Day 2025, messages and quotes!