Tax cuts, immigration, and foreign trade policy headlined a speech from Vice President JD Vance Wednesday in metro Detroit.
Vance spoke at a robotics manufacturing facility in Auburn Hills, where he credited President Donald Trump with bringing blue collar jobs back to Michigan since taking office -- although Democrats said Vance was cherry-picking data.
Tariffs on foreign goods served as a hallmark of Trump’s trade strategy. And, while Vance avoided the word “tariffs” during prepared remarks Wednesday, he alluded to the difference he believes they’ve made.
“We had a president of the United States who was willing to go to war against those foreign companies and those foreign countries who were undercutting the wages of American workers and that is how you get the results that we have seen just over the last 14 months,” Vance said.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional and the U.S. trade court has ordered a refund to American businesses that paid them.
Vance said Michigan added over 2,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump took office in late January last year. But federal jobs numbers are a little more nuanced.
Michigan rose from roughly 594,500 manufacturing jobs in January 2025 to 596,600 preliminary jobs in December. But the sector ended the year down around 5,500 jobs from a peak during Trump’s first month back in office, before his tariffs were largely in place.
Democrats accused Vance of telling a “fairy tale” overall.
“Prices have gone up, unemployment has gone up, and health care premiums have gone up,” state Representative Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia) said during a press call ahead of Vance’s visit.
How Michiganders feel about Trump is likely to affect the November election — where the state could play a key role in which party controls the next Congress.
Vance said the upcoming midterm elections were among the main reasons he came to Michigan. Some of the biggest moments of applause he earned were moments when he called for stronger voter ID laws and immigration enforcement.
A Trump-backed bill before the U.S. Senate, known as the SAVE Act, would require photo IDs in federal elections, and remove people who haven’t proven their citizenship from voter lists.
A Michigan ballot measure to pass similar policies could be headed before voters this November.
Vance implied those policies are what Trump meant earlier this year when he called for Republicans to “nationalize” voting, despite elections being run by states under the U.S. Constitution.
“If you believe as I do that the American people are sovereign in their own country, then you have to believe that their vote should be protected and the only way to fully protect their vote is to prevent fraudsters from coming and voting in American elections,” Vance said in response to a reporter question Thursday.
Opponents of the measures say they would disenfranchise eligible voters to fight a nonexistent problem: Coordinated voter fraud is vanishingly rare, but Democrats said the legislation would lead to thousands of people who don’t have updated documents losing their voter registration.
Vance also argued that the Trump Administration’s immigration policies are keeping the country safe by removing violent offenders.
Critics say many people arrested don’t have criminal records, and that tactics have been too aggressive in cities like Minneapolis, where federal agents killed two American citizens earlier this year.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is renting office space in southeast Michigan and planning to turn a warehouse near Detroit Metropolitan Airport into a detention facility.
Vance said how ICE behaves in Michigan depends on local leaders.
“So long as we’ve got the cooperation and so long as we’re working as a team, the chaos that you’ve seen in Minneapolis, it’s not going to happen. It only happens when you’ve got broken and dysfunctional political leadership that tries to stop us from doing our jobs,” Vance said.
The federal government is reportedly buying similar properties across the country to increase how many immigrants it can detain while it works to deport them.
Non-commercial, fact based reporting is made possible by your financial support. Make your donation to WEMU today to keep your community NPR station thriving.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on X (Twitter)
Contact WEMU News at 734.487.3363 or email us at studio@wemu.org
