It's fascinating to me that so many Blue Avatars here are convinced Trump will hang on to the Rust Belt.
2000 was the last time the Democrat garnered fewer raw votes than Trump 2016 in MI and WI (2004 for PA), so why in the world would he be assured to keep them while losing the White House?
Because of overall trends. The rust belt states are trending republican at a fast rate as the sun belt trends toward democrats. The reason for this is republicans becoming more populist and in some ways economically liberal.
Trump is about the only major Republican who doesn’t personally subscribe to Ayn Randianism, so no. Once he’s out the economic extremists will take that part of the party over full stop. Notice how Trump came out in favor of family leave but the economic extremists shut that down
Whether or not he "personally subscribes" to it, he's clearly implemented Randian policies. the only difference between his economic policies and Ronald Reagan's are on free trade, on everything else he's as far-right, if not more far-right, than Reagan was.
