One day after former President Donald Trump delivered remarks to an economic club in Detroit painting an overly rosy picture of the economy under his administration, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attacked attack the Republican nominee's record on manufacturing during a speech in nearby Macomb County, Michigan.
Walz also took aim at Trump's remark insulting the Motor City, saying that if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected in November, "our whole country will end up being like Detroit."
"If the guy would have ever spent any time in the Midwest, like all of us know, we'd know Detroit's experiencing American comeback and renaissance," Walz said at Macomb Community College in Warren, adding: "City's growing, crime's down, factories are opening up. But those guys, all they know about manufacturing is manufacturing b******* every time they show up."
Walz accused Trump of making false promises to workers, calling him "an absolute disaster for working people" and "one of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs of any American president in history."
During a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee made a series of false claims that painted an overly rosy picture of the economy during his presidency and an overly gloomy one of President Joe Biden’s economy than what the data shows.
“By the time I came into office after our victory in 2016, the Michigan auto industry was on its knees begging for help, gasping, and really it was at the last breaths of life,” he said. “And I had to move quickly. You were going to not have any auto industry.”
Trump credited decisions such as withdrawing the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership and placing tariffs on Chinese-made vehicles for saving the U.S. auto industry.
When Trump took office in January 2021, U.S. auto manufacturing jobs had already steadily been on the rise for years under his predecessor, Barack Obama. The first two years of Trump’s presidency saw the number of industry jobs continue to increase. But the auto industry lost 25,800 jobs in the year leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic before sharply falling further in the early months as the virus spread. Over his fours years in office, the industry lost 3,900 jobs.
Walz hailed the Biden administration's record on automotive jobs and support for the industry and its workers, while seeking to assuage concerns about electric vehicles, saying that Harris wants to make sure those cars are made domestically rather than in China.
"Look, we've got to make EVs," he said. "We've got to make internal combustion. We've got to make hybrids along with the batteries and chips so the auto industry stays competitive and can keep the jobs right here in Michigan.
Trump on Thursday also claimed the U.S. is in a “manufacturing recession,” which he blamed on Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in next month’s election. Manufacturing jobs saw strong gains in the first year and a half of the Biden administration before leveling off over the past two years. Overall, there are 729,000 more manufacturing jobs since Biden took office, a 6% increase.
Trump’s presidency saw a loss of 172,000 manufacturing jobs, in large part due to the pandemic. Before the virus forced many businesses to close, manufacturing saw 3.7% growth in jobs under Trump, a more modest increase than under Biden.
Walz said that a Harris administration will create an American forward strategy for manufacturing," building on the investments from some of the Biden administration's signature legislation, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act, which bolsters research and domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
One that builds on the historic investments ... creating all kinds of new opportunities, ones that empower American workers, revitalizes manufacturing communities, leads us into an industries of the future and keep out-innovating and out-competing the rest of the world," Walz said. "We never fear the future. You build the future and this gives us the opportunity to do it."
The Republican ticket has come under fire in recent weeks after Sen. JD Vance refused to commit to a potential second Trump administration honoring the Biden administration's $500 million federal grant to General Motors Co. to convert a Cadillac sedan assembly plant in Michigan into a future electric vehicle plant.
“The bottom line is that Donald Trump and JD Vance are a menace to the working class and are openly threatening to double down on Trump’s legacy of job destruction,” said the United Auto Workers Union at the time, calling Trump the “job-killer-in-chief.”
Walz reminded Michiganders of Vance’s comments, charging that while the Democratic ticket is looking out for the middle class, Republicans “couldn’t care less about Michigan workers.”
“Trump’s presidency was an endless string of broken promises. He actually came here to Warren when he ran the first time and promised that, under a Trump presidency, ‘you won’t lose one plant.’ I guess, technically, that wasn’t a lie — because he lost 6 of them across the country. Including the GM transmission plant right down the road,” Walz said.
He urged those gathered to "go out and talk to" their friends and neighbors about Trump's policies for workers, while also maintaining that "we've got to give them something to vote for" in terms of Vice President Harris' economic proposals.
"We've got to tell them what we stand for and what we want to vote for," he said, before highlighting Harris' proposals for workers, including her pledge to sign into law legislation aimed at protecting workers' rights to organize.
Walz also played to the crowd of union workers in the audience, praising the city's rebirth, local and state leadership in Michigan, and even a topic near and dear to Detroiters' hearts.
"You might know I'm from Minnesota, but I say this with a pure and true heart on this: How great is it to see the Tigers playing baseball in October?" Walz said of Detroit's MLB franchise, which faces a pivotal win-or-go-home Game 5 on Saturday against their more than century-old rival Cleveland Guardians.
"Just one more reason Detroit's a great city," said Walz, a self-described Minnesota Twins fan.
Vice President Harris is set to travel to Michigan next week for a live interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God.
Spectrum News' Ryan Chatelain and The Associated Press contributed to this report.