Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off a two-day swing through Michigan on Friday with remarks to union workers in Lansing and a rally in Grand Rapids, where she sought to blast her GOP opponent’s record on manufacturing jobs and organized labor – two critical issues in the battleground Rust Belt state.
“Donald Trump is making the same empty promises to the people of Michigan that he did before hoping, hoping you will forget how he let you down the last time,” Harris said at the Friday Grand Rapids rally.
The vice president specifically went after Trump for promising to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from overseas, referring to him “one of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs in American history.”
The U.S. economy had about 12.37 million people employed in the manufacturing industry in Jan. 2017, when the former president took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When he left office in Dec. 2020, employment in the industry was down to 12.19 million
However, Trump’s presidency included the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a range of industries across America suffered losses. The month before the pandemic began to take shape in the U.S., Feb. 2020, manufacturing jobs in the country were up to 12.78 million.
Harris went on to call Trump “no friend to labor” and his track record on the auto industry – which is Michigan’s biggest – a "disaster.”
She condemned the former president for visiting a nonunion auto parts company in Clinton Township, Mich., during last year’s United Auto Workers strike.
“Michigan, you know better: Strong unions mean higher wages, better health care and greater dignity for union members and for everyone, whether or not you are part of a union,” Harris said on Friday. “Get that straight. Get that straight.”
Harris herself, she declared, would invest in “the industries that built America,” like steel, iron and auto to ensure the U.S. “wins the competition for the 21st century” over China. She pledged to “reexamine” degree requirements for federal jobs to ensure some don’t require a college degree sign and promised to sign the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which weakens anti-union laws and hands more influence to organized workers.
Later on Friday at a UAW union hall in Lansing, Harris touted the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to protect workers’ pensions through the American Rescue plan and the nearly 730,000 manufacturing jobs added during their time in office. As of September 2024, preliminary figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show there 12.92 million people employed in the industry, up from 12.19 million when Biden took office in Jan. 2021.
The current figure is about 140,000 more jobs in the industry than Feb. 2020, just before the pandemic hit during Trump’s administration.
In Lansing on Friday, Harris also lauded union workers for having “helped lead the fight for fair pay, better benefits and safe working conditions.” She declared that “labor is on the line” in this election, calling Trump an “existential threat to America’s labor movement.”
At one point during her remarks, Harris directed her team to play a video with clips of comments Trump has made about unions and workers – a new tactic the campaign has deployed this week in a bid to highlight the former president’s rhetoric.
“He’s got his club and I’m telling you, union workers are not part of his club,” Harris said following the video.
Meanwhile, the vice president started her remarks in Grand Rapids on Friday slamming Trump over reports that he has canceled on interviews because he is “exhausted,” Harris said.
“Well, if you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world.”
Harris on Friday also hit on her usual points about abortion, the economy and her concerns that the Supreme Court ruling declaring that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for officials acts in office would give him “unchecked power.”
She reiterated her pledge to expand Medicare to cover at-home care for seniors and her criticisms of Trump saying in last month’s debate that he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act
“It's funny, we thought it was ridiculously hilarious when we first heard it,” she said, before going on to talk about what she framed as the seriousness of such a claim.
The vice president is set to speak at a local union hall in Lansing on Friday before headlining a rally in Oakland County. The vice president will be in Detroit on Saturday, where she will meet with local faith leaders before delivering remarks to a crowd ahead of their march to the polls to vote, according to her campaign. Saturday marks the first day of early voting in Detroit while the rest of the state will be able to vote in person one week later.
Trump is also in Michigan holding campaign events in and around Detroit on Friday.
Michigan, along with its so-called “Blue Wall” counterparts, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, flipped red to support Trump in 2016 for the first time in nearly three decades. The three Rust Belt states flipped back to blue to back President Joe Biden in 2020.
Harris spent all week campaigning in the three critical states.