There’s another point around this that gets conspicuously missed, namely the work ethic/culture issue which will have unquestionably have been hugely eroded in those rust belt states in the last half century. In that period drug use will have increased enormously, opioid use exponentially, rates of obesity will have gone through the roof amongst large swathes of the population much of which are zombified by social media addiction and the rabbit holes it transports them to daily.
The ethos of the dignity of work has been washed away in the last couple of generations and it’s hard to see how, wage differentials apart, the requisite productivity levels can be attained, even if all the other factors fall into place, which they absolutely won’t.