DETROIT — President Donald Trump returned to Michigan on Tuesday, touring a Ford manufacturing facility while promoting his efforts to boost the U.S. economy and assuage fears over a weakening job market and rising prices.
Trump visited the factory floor at the River Rouge plant in Dearborn, viewing F-150s – the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. – in various stages of production. Joining him was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The president spoke with workers as well as the automaker’s executive chairman, Bill Ford.
“All U.S. automakers are doing great,” Trump said, later adding, “Quality is unbelievable.”
Ford announced in December that it was scrapping plans to make an electric F-150, despite pouring billions of dollars into broader electrification, after the Trump administration slashed targets to have half of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, eliminated EV tax credits and proposed weakening the emissions and gas mileage rules.
Following the tour, Trump headed to MotorCity Casino in downtown Detroit to address members of the Detroit Economic Club.
In a wide-ranging speech that touched on everything from health care to Venezuela, the president dismissed concerns about affordability as a “hoax” perpetuated by the Democrats.
He made a point on the factory floor of mentioning that his administration has imposed large tariffs on vehicles imported from China and said he hopes to prevail at the Supreme Court, which is weighing the legality of his sweeping tariff policies.
Trump also suggested that a major North American trade agreement he negotiated during his first term, the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact, was irrelevant and no longer necessary for the United States. The pact, known as the USMCA, is up for review this year.
Some good news for Trump arrived before he left Washington, when new data from December showed inflation declined a bit last month as prices for gas and used cars fell — a sign that cost pressures are slowly easing. Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department said, the same as in November.
“We have very low inflation,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before heading to Michigan, adding that “growth is going up. We have tremendous growth numbers.”
Outside the casino, demonstrators gathered to protest Trump and his policies.
“They want you to think that the Left is the issue, but this is a humanitarian issue. This is our health care, our freedoms, our democratic right, the Constitution,” Jackson, Mich., resident Susan Finch said.
“As long as the people are in power that are in power now, absolutely they’re not going to stop,” Traverse City, Mich., resident Melody Karr said. "They’re actually pretending that they didn’t do anything wrong.”
Curtis Hertel, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said that “after spending months claiming that affordability was a ‘hoax’ and creating a health care crisis for Michiganders, Donald Trump is now coming to Detroit — a city he hates — to tout his billionaire-first agenda while working families suffer."
“Michiganders are feeling the effects of Trump’s economy every day,” Hertel said in a statement.
