How to Use rust belt in a Sentence

rust belt

noun
  • This town called Millwood, which is a less affluent town, is a rust belt town down on its luck.
    — Sabrina Park, Harper's BAZAAR, 28 July 2022
  • Now a lot of small towns like this in the rust belt are mostly empty, storefronts on Main Street are boarded up.
    — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Nevertheless, in the rust belt of the North East, factories were already in decline and thefts were on the rise.
    — Patrick Frater, Variety, 22 Oct. 2023
  • On Saturday, Glor will discuss the changes that have been made throughout Cleveland and the rust belt in the decades since the iconic fires.
    — CBS News, 21 June 2019
  • When sectors in some regions decline—such as farming in the Midwest or manufacturing in the rust belt—people move to places with more jobs.
    — Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs, 17 Oct. 2016
  • Without creative thinking, the fossil fuel industry will collapse, and Houston will turn into a warmer, wetter rust belt.
    — Bloomberg Wire, Dallas News, 5 Mar. 2020
  • And drug trafficking is one of the main reasons why it's being sold to parts of the country like Ohio, like West Virginia, Midwestern states, rust belt states.
    — Leah Feiger, WIRED, 17 Oct. 2024
  • Putin responded by sending Russian troops and paramilitaries to occupy large portions of the country, including its industrial rust belt in the east.
    — Simon Shuster, Time, 9 July 2018
  • Their power was previously confined mainly to a few regions of the country, largely the rust belt in northeastern France and then a region in southeastern France along the coast.
    — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 9 July 2024
  • Gavin Moulton, the writer and photographer behind the popular X account rust belt roadtrip, circulated the post more.
    — Hope Karnopp, jsonline.com, 21 Oct. 2025
  • Northeast Ohio steps in for the suburban college town of Blacksmith and its rust belt urban center Iron City during the 1980s.
    — Joey Morona, cleveland, 29 Nov. 2022
  • But then came the industrial decline, and Duluth became just another rust belt community suffering an economic hangover.
    — James Fallows, CBS News, 6 May 2018
  • Just the tonic In Scotland’s rust belt, where the decline of coal and steel has left a legacy of high unemployment and social decay, Abdul Majid has run a small grocery store for 34 years.
    — Alastair Jamieson, NBC News, 7 Feb. 2018
  • Now the Democrats ran up the popular vote with lopsided victories in a handful of very liberal high-population states while falling just short of carrying a handful of more culturally conservative states in the rust belt and upper Midwest.
    — Damon Linker, TheWeek, 15 Sep. 2020
  • He was bound for the draft, though, following a pair of All-Big Ten seasons and 19 passes defended across the two — atypical immediate production for a man who transferred from James Madison to the rust belt.
    — Noah White, Miami Herald, 25 Apr. 2026
  • National Republicans have targeted Mrvan’s seat as a flip opportunity for the last two election cycles and are poised to again in 2026, especially as Northwest Indiana’s rust belt communities have voted more Republican over the years.
    — Brittany Carloni, IndyStar, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Individuals, families, and employers located in three rust belt states — Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania — also have Democratic governors who are calling on their state legislatures to enact billions of dollars in higher state taxes in 2021.
    — Patrick Gleason, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rust belt.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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