Campaigning in swing state Michigan on Tuesday, Ohio Sen. JD Vance played the role of attack dog for the Trump campaign, tearing into Vice President Kamala Harris and claiming she is “helping China destroy and replace our auto industry from the inside out.”
He used his remarks at a horse farm in Big Rapids, Mich., to blame Harris for much of the United States’ economic woes. But the Harris campaign pushed back on Vance’s arguments, boasting of the Biden administration’s economic record and claiming the Republican vice presidential nominee was mischaracterizing Harris’ policies.
“She isn't just causing high prices. She's undoing the incredible work that Donald Trump did to rebuild American manufacturing,” Vance said, standing behind the bulletproof glass that is now used at outdoor campaign events since Trump was shot at a Pennsylvania rally in July. “The message from this crowd and this state of Michigan is, you had your chance, you failed, and we're not giving you a promotion, and Donald J. Trump is coming back to clean up your mess.”
In a statement prior to the speech, Harris campaign spokesperson said Vance “will undoubtedly lie, gaslight, and try to run away from the truth about what a Trump-Vance administration would do to the middle class.”
Vance blamed Harris for higher grocery prices, home prices and rent. Harris’ campaign countered that “Trump was the worst jobs president in modern American history – crippling the job market even before the pandemic.” Moussa cited an analysis by Moody’s Analytics that found Trump’s economic plan would trigger “a recession beginning in mid-2025” and create an economy where households “do less well financially.”
“Ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? The only person in America who could possibly answer ‘yes’ to that question is probably Kamala Harris herself. She went from getting no votes for president and having to drop out to getting no votes for president and becoming the Democrat nominee all without lifting a finger,” Vance said. “No wonder Kamala is joyful. Now, never mind the fact that Americans can't afford groceries. Kamala got her promotion.”
As he tours battleground states this week — he has stops planned in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Wednesday — Vance waded into a local Michigan issue in an attempt to align the Trump campaign against Chinese companies he says Harris is “helping” to the detriment of American companies.
Big Rapids is near the site of a multibillion dollar electric vehicle battery plant being planned by Gotion, a Chinese company. In recent years, Michigan Republicans have aligned themselves with local opposition to the plant and a legal fight is playing out in the courts. Among the locals who oppose the plant is real estate agent Lori Black, the owner of the horse farm Vance spoke at on Tuesday.
Trump came out against the Gotion plant in a social media post last week, writing he was “100% OPPOSED” and that it “would put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.”
“Kamala Harris not only wants to allow the Chinese Communist Party to build factories on American soil. She wants to pay them to do it with our tax money,” Vance said on Tuesday. “Now Democrats in this state, and including Kamala Harris, want to give them hundreds of millions of dollars to those same companies that have been undercutting Michigan autoworkers. What a disaster, isn’t it?”
Moussa preemptively countered this point by pointing to tariffs implemented by the Biden administration on electric vehicles manufactured in China and efforts by the Treasury Department to exclude Chinese companies from benefiting from major federal spending laws passed under President Joe Biden. Moussa also cited a quote from GM board member and former Tesla executive Jon McNeill who told CNBC in May that Trump’s reported plans to gut tax breaks for electric vehicles would “risk losing the auto manufacturing share to China.”
“This November, voters will face a stark choice between a Park Avenue millionaire who’s never known an honest day’s work, and a tough-as-nails prosecutor with middle class roots who’s spent her career fighting for working people. The contrast could not be more clear,” Harris spokesperson said in a separate statement on Tuesday.
In attendance at Vance’s speech was his mother, Beverly Aikins. The Ohio senator used Aikins story of drug addiction, which played a central role in Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” to batter Harris, claiming “the formula of Kamala Harris and her handlers” includes opening “our border to millions of illegal immigrants and into that void, into that void of joblessness, pour drugs and a lot of cheap labor.” Aikins will be 10 years sober as of January 2025, Vance said earlier this year.
“I've lived, I know a lot of us in this crowd have lived the consequences of these failures, and I saw it very personally,” Vance said. “My mom, God love her, she found solace in the prescription pain pills that a lot of kids and a lot of adults were getting hooked on and then eventually she moved on to some harder stuff.”
“I'm very proud of my friends to tell you, not only did my mom find a second chance, but she's here with us today,” he added, before calling her “the best grandmother that my kids could ask for” and joking about her buying too many Pokemon cards for her grandkids.
After his speech, Vance visited a nearby A&W Restaurant and bought supporters root beer floats.
Trump lost Michigan to Biden by around three percentage points in 2020 after eking out a slim victory there in 2016. Recent polls since Harris got in the race show Harris with around a two to three point lead, according to polling averages maintained by the New York Times and FiveThirtyEight. Trump plans to visit the state on Thursday and Harris will make a trip to Detroit on Labor Day next week, her sixth visit to Michigan of 2024.