As somebody once said: "Follow the money."

Those running the government never talk to real consumers or constituents - they talk to those with lots of money who want to make more (and their lawyers and lobbyists). The Party of those in power matters only slightly in that regard other than in the words used while giving the public the finger.

What really happened was that China and a couple of other countries decided to take over the world manufacturing market by making virtual slaves available to business. They essentially made it impossible for anybody paying living wages (even in places like Mexico) to do business. Hence the current race to the bottom. Some future historian will probably find that those countries had a hand in designing or perverting the "free trade" system to make their putsch possible, but they couldn't do it without the help of big businesses in the countries getting their labor markets nuked. Think quarterly profit statements vs. stock (option) prices ...

What all this has to do with loss of the Apache I'm not sure. The mill is closing (if I read between TFA's lines correctly) because their raw material costs kept going up (China is paying more for old newsprint now, and what's available even at that price is lower quality because the recyclers have cut back on wages & staff so they can make more money). They couldn't cut enough other costs to offset that (it costs more to live in AZ than in China so even slave wages here have to be a bit higher). If that was the only shipper, the RR's gone whether they owned it or not.

BTW, if there were a reasonable alternative named "none of the above" that would be my choice in the current political races ... all the choices seem to be crooks, whackos, or both. Unfortunately, there just aren't any reasonable alternatives - nobody wants to just run the show requiring reasonable service from the employees and charging the public what's needed to pay for it. And with that this thread can be retired since there's nothing much more to say that's railroad-related other than: go look and take pics now!