Former President Donald Trump stands as “God Bless the USA” plays just prior to a speech the Detroit Economic Club. Oct. 10, 2024. Photo by Jon King
Former President Donald Trump was scheduled to speak about the automotive industry on Thursday when he addressed a friendly audience at the Detroit Economic Club.
In a more than two-hour presentation, Trump ended up mixing economic policy-specific details into rambling remarks that covered his list of familiar grievances, particularly against his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, who he called “dumb as hell.” At one point, he insisted that if she were elected, the whole country “will end up being like Detroit.”
Trump’s appearance at the MotorCity Casino Hotel’s Soundboard laid out what his campaign called the “Build It In America Plan,” which he said would result, improbably, in countries like China and Mexico shipping manufacturing jobs to the United States.
Trump was introduced by John Rakolta Jr., chair of construction firm Walbridge and a Detroit Economic Club board member, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from 2019 to 2021.
“Having had the honor of working for President Trump, I can assure you that he’s exactly the kind of person who wanted over the battlefield,” said Rakolta. “A man of conviction, no fear, the tip of the spear, and a man who gets things done.”
Trump, soaking in the adulation, stood next to the podium while the entirety of the Lee Greenwood anthem, “God Bless the USA,” played and the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Trump began his remarks by expressing concern for victims of Hurricane Milton, but then immediately jumped into further spreading the lie that the Biden administration had not been fully working to assist victims.
“In particular, with respect to North Carolina, that those people suffer unjustly,” echoing misinformation about the Federal Emergency Management Agency response.
He then leaned into his familiar attack on journalists, targeting CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired an interview Sunday with Harris, while Trump backed out.
“The other big news is the fraud committed by 60 Minutes and CBS together with the Democrat (sic) Party, working together with them, which will go down as the single biggest scandal in broadcast history. I predict it’s a big story. I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet. It happened,” said Trump, referencing accusations that the network edited the interview with Harris to make her look “more presidential.”
He then turned to New York Times writer Peter Baker, who co-wrote a story on Sunday openly questioning Trump’s age and fitness for office.
“He wrote a piece about me and just one of the many things he said that was wrong, but he said that I would go around saying that I was honored here years ago as the man of the year or whatever,” said Trump. “And I talked about how your car industry, this was long before many years before I ran for president, maybe 18, 20 years ago, and he made a statement that an honor never took place. I was never honored here, which is quite insulting.”
Trump was referring to a claim he has made for years that he was honored as “Man of the Year” at an Oakland County Republican event in 2013, despite that being debunked multiple times including by former Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, who was at the event and said no such award was given. Trott recently announced he was among a group of Republicans that were endorsing Harris.
Trump eventually got to the reason for his visit, which was proclaiming himself to be the only one who could save the automotive industry.
“Detroit was decimated as if by a foreign army. This was a foreign army invading us, but it was an army of business people, very brilliant business people that took the candy out of our pockets just like you take it from a baby,” he said. “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.”
Trump said his plan would include a 15% “Made in America Corporate Tax Rate,” cutting the tax from 21% down to 15%, as well as make interest on car loans fully tax deductible, which he claimed would “stimulate massive domestic auto production, and make car ownership dramatically more affordable for millions of working American families.” He did not detail how that would be accomplished without expanding the national debt.
Trump also proposed expanding research and development tax credits for U.S.-based manufacturers, enabling them to write off 100% of the cost of heavy machinery and other equipment in the first year, and full expensing for new manufacturing investment, while also doubling the amount small businesses can deduct for work vehicles from $500,000 to $1 million.
He also said upon taking office, he planned to formally notify Mexico and Canada of his intention to invoke the six-year-renegotiation provision of the agreement between the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada (USMCA), the deal which his administration brokered to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The review provision is automatic and set to take place in 2026, when the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will confirm in writing whether or not to continue the agreement.
One of those in attendance was Bahman Mirshab, who was previously the dean of the College of Business and Information Technology at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield until he stepped down a year and a half ago to return to the classroom as an instructor.
“It was very, very, very simplistic solutions for complicated problems,” he said of Trump’s speech. “It’s against what we’re teaching in economics. I mean, these are simplistic solutions that ‘I’m gonna put a tariff and then suddenly everything is gonna be in good shape.’ Okay. They [other nations] put tariffs too, and we’re going to pay in the final analysis.”
As to Trump’s assertion that by lowering the corporate tax enough, foreign manufacturers in countries like Germany, China and Mexico will ship jobs to the United States, Mirshab disagreed.
“Germans are building cars here. Can you take one of our SUVs and drive them on the streets of Europe? The reason they are not buying what we’re producing is because it’s not fit for their market,” he said. “We are driving a 10,000-pound truck to work one day, and then I take one of those trucks to Europe and see what will happen. There’s going to be a huge traffic jam. And by the way, they are building cars here. Mercedes is building cars here. VW is building cars here. So you cannot come and say protection is going to serve everything. If that’s the case, we should have continued building steam engine locomotives.”
In between policy specifics, however, Trump wandered off topic several times to talk about various issues that had no relation to each other.
“I want German car companies to become American car companies. I want them to build plants in America,” said Trump. “It’s gonna happen. We’ll never actually go along with this, but we’ll get it done one way or the other. I hope they’re gonna go along with this like, so many things they have, like voter ID, why aren’t they approving voter ID? Democrats have no voter ID. You know why? Because they wanna cheat. It’s only one reason. It’s crazy. No country in the world has a policy like that.”
Trump also touted his efforts to make NATO nations contribute more toward their defense while he was in the White House, but turned it quickly into an insult into the very city he was speaking in.
“I don’t think anything that we’re talking about today is high on her [Harris] list. I mean, the whole country’s gonna be like, you wanna know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s the president. She destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed, along with Newscum [his nickname for California Gov. Gavin Newsom], California. And we’re not gonna let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was among the leaders who put Trump on blast for his comments.
“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities—something Donald Trump could never understand,” she said on social media. “So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”
This is the second visit to Michigan by Trump in the last week, following a rally in Saginaw on Oct. 3. Meanwhile, his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), was in Detroit earlier this week when he spoke at Eastern Market on Tuesday.
Trump last addressed the Detroit Economic Club in August 2016 at Detroit’s former Huntington Place convention center, less than three months before he won the presidency in the Electoral College, despite losing the national popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. However, Trump’s Electoral College victory was made possible by his winning Michigan’s popular vote by approximately 10,700 votes that year.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Trump with a three point lead over Harris in Michigan, 50 to 47%, although polling averages show Harris up by a point.
The visit came as absentee ballots have already been mailed out to voters in Michigan, with early voting set to begin Oct. 26.
Ahead of Trump’s remarks, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain and Harris Senior Economic Advisor Gene Sperling hosted a campaign press call to lay out the former president’s economic policies, which they say incentivized companies to ship jobs offshore and resulted in the shuttering of manufacturing plants.
“Plant closures are exactly what Trump is threatening with his plan to roll back tens of billions of dollars of investment in American manufacturing jobs,” said Fain. “Just last week, J.D. Vance called the $500 million investment at the Grand River Plant here at GM in Lansing ‘table scraps,’ and it’s going to secure 650 jobs, although Vance refuses to commit to the funding and what his offer would be to workers, and because their offer is nothing.”
Sperling noted that it was Harris who provided the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which he said was an example of the type of economic policies her administration would champion versus the uncertainty of another Trump term.
“In this particular [IRA] program, which is so important and such a model for what Kamala Harris is committing to do going forward, which is, as Shawn said, making sure people don’t go through the pain, indignity of a community spiraling down, factories closing, no investment,” said Sperling. “You know, just in Michigan, in that one program, you have another investment again, with the UAW in Marysville, Mich., that also – now those folks have to wonder, is that coming through?”
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee purchased billboard space at 22 locations in and around Detroit reminding voters of the former president’s jobs record during his term in office.
During Trump’s presidency, Michigan lost 280,000 jobs, although most of those losses were due to pandemic and associated supply chain shutdowns. Regardless, one of the billboards called Trump “a disaster for Michigan, while another depicted UAW President Shawn Fain at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during which he called Trump “a scab.”
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