Starting with the recession of the early 1980's I have watched 10's of, if not, 100's of thousands of good paying, good benefit providing job's vanish. Along with the jobs disappearing so did the Democratic votes that those jobs provided.
The guy's chronology is a bit off, though his age may be a factor. At a time when foreign competition was coming online in the world market for steel, Federal Enviro-Regs forbade US steel companies opening modern plants until after they added pollution controls to older plants. IOW, the EPA forced the diversion of $$ that should have been invested in new technologies - vital to US steel companies' medium- and long-term survival - into plants that were approaching retirement age. And in the 70s and previous decades, unions had kept jacking up wages, bennies, and work-rule insanity, also driving the steel industry out of what had been its industrial heartland.
IOW, the recession of the early 80s was a symptom rather than a cause of the loss of US manufacturing jobs.