Sleepy Arkansas county set to become America’s next boomtown as new steel plants and Trump tariffs fuel revival

A county in Arkansas that has been poor for decades could see a revival as President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel create more incentives for domestic producers.

Over the past decade US Steel and other manufacturers have poured billions of dollars of investment into Mississippi County, an area along the major river bearing the same name.

The county is now set to produce 12 million tons of steel each year, just behind northwest Indiana, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.

That is thanks to the three major steel mills in Osceola, the county seat. Two of those facilities, one owned by US Steel and the other by Hybar, were finished within the past three years. 

While the growth largely predates Trump’s tariffs, the president’s controversial policy may provide a further boon for the area. 

Despite this sign of hope, towns across the county are still full of rural decay and abandoned buildings, serving as a depressing reminder of the area’s glory days in the 1950s.

Back then, the area was known as an agricultural powerhouse for cotton and soybeans.

Many steelworkers who work in Mississippi County still see it as too remote to live in and choose to commute long distances. They often travel in from neighboring states like Tennessee.

Some who have homes out of state opt to live in RVs near their worksite when they are on one of their dayslong shifts. US Steel estimates that only 38 percent of its workforce in the county also reside there.

Despite drawing in billions of dollars of investment from steel producers, Mississippi County is still marked by rural decay (Pictured: Main street in Osceola, the county seat)

The county still has a long way to go to regain the status it enjoyed 80 years ago when it was considered a middle-class haven (Pictured: A thriving street corner Osceola in 1948)

The county still has a long way to go to regain the status it enjoyed 80 years ago when it was considered a middle-class haven. 

The median household income for the county is $53,428, and about one in four people live in poverty, according to 2023 census estimates. The medium household income across the US as a whole was $80,610.

‘We used to have churches but now they’re almost all empty,’ Clif Chitwood, the county’s economic-development officer, told The Wall Street Journal. ‘There’s been just a collapse of the whole social structure.’

The county seeks to address this by taking advantage of the steel boom at the moment and offering home buyers money toward down payments on new or existing properties.

The initiative, called ‘Work Here. Live Here,’ is available to anyone who chooses to live and work in the county for at least four years.

The long-term viability of the program is not yet clear, but Chitwood said it has already started to bring in new residents.

Mervin Jebaraj, an economist at the University of Arkansas, cast doubt on this plan, citing growing efforts from companies to automate away jobs.

Steel manufacturers are certainly not immune to this growing workplace trend, Jebaraj told The Journal.

Pictured: The exterior of Hybar’s $700 million mill in Osceola. The facility also has a solar farm

Big companies like US Steel or General Motors were once able to launch hospitals and schools to help build a community around their factories.

They now operate on much thinner margins, meaning large-scale efforts to create a functioning, thriving region have been replaced with small donations to local initiatives.

The burden has largely fallen on local and county governments to revitalize their areas with the tax money they still have in their coffers.

Part of the spend from officials goes toward luring the companies.

Over a period of years over the past two decades the Great River Economic Development Foundation invested about $25 million to attract steel-related businesses.

The taxpayer funds helped steel companies buy land and equipment. They also went toward training workers.

This strategy paid off, with Big River Steel building its first plant, worth $1.4 billion, in 2014.

US Steel took over Big River in 2021, then launched a separate $3 billion mill in 2022, the largest private investment into Arkansas in the state’s history.

Finally, in 2023, Hybar announced it would build a $700 million mill to make rebar, along with a solar farm to power its machinery.

Mississippi County now boasts 7,000 and 8,000 steel or steel-related jobs, which is about a quarter of all the jobs in the county.

But even with all the investment, the county still needed to get people to actually live there to fuel its tax base.

With help from the initiative Barrett Fisackerly bought a $240,000 house with his wife in Blytheville, Arkansas, he told The Journal

The ‘Work Here. Live Here’ initiative was born for that exact purpose. 

The county worked with Farmers Bank & Trust, a local bank, to develop a financing plan. 

Under the framework newly constructed homes and existing homes would come with forgivable loans of 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

Steel companies and other employers have been asked to contribute to the program. That money was later lent back to their own employees.

So far, a dozen private employers in the county have invested, allowing about 160 families to buy homes in the county.

US Steel said it has contributed $3.4 million to the program and has benefitted 148 employees, according to Daniel R Brown, chief operating officer of the company’s operations in the county.

Chitwood said about 250 new homes have been built in the past 14 months, with more than half of them bought under the ‘Work Here. Live Here’ initiative.

‘It doesn’t sound like many until you realize it’s more than we had in 20 years,’ he said.

With help from the initiative Barrett Fisackerly bought a $240,000 house with his wife in Blytheville, Arkansas, he told The Journal.

Fisackerly and his wife are both employed at Lexicon, a steel fabricator and construction company that is a short drive south from their new home.