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Former President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to lead a “revival of economic nationalism” that will protect the auto industry jobs that he said the Biden administration is threatening through its push for electric vehicles.
Mr. Trump said the United Auto Workers should endorse his presidential bid because he will fight against the “environmental lunatics” and “ultra-left-wing globalists” who want to sell out the auto industry to “foreign countries that hate us.”
“A vote for President Trump means the future of the automobile will be made in America — like it should be,” Mr. Trump told workers at a non-unionized automotive industry supplier in Michigan.
Mr. Trump skipped the second GOP presidential debate in favor of trying to reconnect with the blue-collar voters in the Midwest who were a key part of the winning coalition that he cobbled together in 2016.
The visit came a day after President Biden joined members of the United Auto Workers on the picket line.
Mr. Biden rallied behind the union’s push for higher wages, shorter work weeks and assurances from the country’s top automakers that new electric vehicle jobs will be unionized.
But Mr. Trump said “the workers of America, to put it very nicely, are getting screwed” on Biden’s watch.
“It is his policies that sent Michigan autoworkers to the unemployment line,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump said, that even if UAW workers get everything they want out of the current strike, those jobs will still be in peril because of Mr. Biden’s vision.
That is why, Mr. Trump said, UAW leaders would be smart to back him.
“I will not say a bad thing about them again,” he said. “If they endorse me, they will have the easiest labor leadership job anywhere in the country. They just have to sit back and watch as our auto industry reignites and booms.”
Steve Mitchell, a Michigan-based GOP strategist, said Mr. Trump’s trip shows he is eyeing a general election rematch with Mr. Biden, and knows he needs working-class voters in places like Michigan to get over the hump.
“Look, if you can get the UAW in play in an election as a Republican that is a huge step,” Mr. Mitchell said.
The UAW has been a bulwark for Democrats. The union has seen its numbers dwindle dramatically over the decades, but it still has about 400,000 activist members, many of them in Michigan.
David A. Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in Michigan, said the early battle for these voters likely helps explain why Mr. Biden was willing to endorse the UAW workers’ call for a 40% pay raise.
“That in part demonstrates that he knows they are a key part of Trump’s path to victory in places like Michigan and he is going to try to keep them away from Trump,” Mr. Dulio said.
Mr. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes, making him the first Republican to carry the state in a presidential race since President Reagan in 1988.
“Trump is trying to reprise his 2016 campaign here in southeast Michigan and try to convince those same folks Macomb County and other parts of the Midwest that are blue-collar workers - many of them union workers - that he deserves another chance,” Mr. Dulio said.
Mr. Trump’s success story was in part built off his ability to cut Mrs. Clinton’s margin of victory among voters from union households to 13%.
Mr. Biden, however, won those votes by a 25 percentage-point margin, and he also flipped southeast Michigan back into the Democratic column.
Mr. Biden is looking to recreate that magic by warning that Mr. Trump promised big things for union workers as president but never delivered.
“He says he stands with autoworkers, but as president, Donald Trump passed tax breaks for his rich friends, while automakers shuttered their plants, and Michigan lost manufacturing jobs,” says the narrator in a Biden campaign ad released Wednesday that features video footage of Mr. Trump driving around in a golf cart.
The Democratic National Committee also set up billboards in the Detroit metro area knocking Mr. Trump. “What happened to the auto industry when Donald Trump was president?” a sign read. “Thousands were laid off! PROMISE BROKEN!”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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