While other Republican candidates participate in the Sept. 27 event in California, Trump instead plans to speak to more than 500 autoworkers, plumbers, electricians and pipe-fitters, the adviser said. The group is likely to include workers from the United Auto Workers union that is striking against the Big Three automakers in the country’s Rust Belt. The Trump adviser added that it is unclear whether the former president will visit the strike line.
The New York Times first reported the Detroit address.
Trump’s campaign also created a radio ad, to run on sports- and rock-themed stations in Detroit and Toledo, meant to present him as being on the side of striking autoworkers, the adviser said.
“All they’ve ever wanted is to compete fairly worldwide and get their fair share of the American Dream,” a narrator says in the ad, which does not explicitly mention the strike. “Donald Trump calls them great Americans and has always had their backs.”
Trump’s scheduled appearance in Detroit will place him in a state he captured in 2016, flipping Michigan after Democratic incumbent Barack Obama’s win there in 2012. President Biden, however, turned the state blue in 2020, winning by more than 150,000 votes.
The planned speech to striking workers is a complicated needle for him to thread, given his administration enacted policies detested by organized labor, weakened the National Labor Relations Board and approved legislation centered on lower corporate taxes. On Truth Social, Trump posted Friday that pushing to build electric cars is a “disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer.” He added: “If this happens, the United Auto workers will be wiped out, along with all other auto workers in the United States.”
The former president has also slammed UAW President Shawn Fain, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Fain is failing the striking workers.
“The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership,” Trump said.
Biden, who casts himself as pro-union, has expressed support for the striking workers. On Friday, he called on General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep and Chrysler, to improve their pay proposals.
During his presidency, Biden has appointed labor allies to the National Labor Relations Board and federal judgeships. A 2021 law that he supported gave workers more bargaining power.
But the UAW has so far withheld its endorsement from Biden, with Fain saying in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the organization’s support is “going to be earned, not freely given.”
“We expect action, not words,” he said.
Fain has said he is not a fan of Trump, either.
Some Democratic legislators are pressing Biden to join the picket line, fearing that Trump could make inroads with union workers — an important faction of the Democratic base. The White House declined to comment on whether Biden is considering a visit to the picket line.
The UAW is demanding a 36 percent wage increase over four years, an end to a system where newer workers are paid less and a right to strike over proposed plant closures as Detroit transitions from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles. The Big Three automakers have said while they want to agree to a fair contract, they already face higher U.S. labor costs than their nonunionized rivals do.
Jeanne Whalen contributed to this report.
