Democrats to highlight Trump’s job loss record as ex-president addresses Detroit Economic Club

When Donald Trump arrives in Detroit to speak to the city’s famed economic club on Thursday, he’ll be greeted with reminders of the thousands of autoworkers whose jobs vanished from the Wolverine State during his time in the White House.

A new ad installation funded by the Democratic National Committee is placing billboards at 22 separate locations in and around the Motor City to warn Michiganders of the ex-president’s dismal record on protecting auto industry and union jobs.

Despite promises that Michigan would not lose a single auto manufacturing position on his watch, Trump’s presidency saw 280,000 jobs lost in the state from 2017 to the end of his term in 2021, with multiple auto plans closing their doors during that time.

Democrats want to remind voters of those facts with the billboards, which have two different designs.

One says the ex-president was “a disaster for Michigan” and lists the job losses under his administration, while the other admonishes Michiganders to “Listen to the UAW,” depicting union president Shawn Fain and a quote from his Democratic National Convention appearance in which he called Trump “a scab.”

Fain, who is also serving as a top Harris surrogate, told reporters on a campaign Zoom call early Thursday that Trump, “the job killer in chief,” has returned to the Wolverine State to “do what he does best — he’s going to lie about bringing our jobs back.”

“It’s nothing new — we've seen this same song and dance from Trump over and over ... but the reality is, Trump never brought back squat,” he said. “Donald Trump has done nothing for auto workers when he was president for four years.”

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The ex-president does have a history of anti-union activity. His appointments to the position of Secretary of Labor were both anti-union lawyers, and he frequently used the bully pulpit of the presidency to attack labor union officials and unionized workers, who he once described as “dues-sucking people.”

His running-mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also disparaged Biden administration efforts to boost electric vehicle manufacturing in unionized Michigan facilities as “table scraps,” and a Democratic National Committee press release announcing the billboard campaign accused both men of “threatening to gut the very investments helping to create thousands of jobs in Michigan and across the country.”

Fain also called out Trump’s attempt at re-negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the ex-president branded the “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” and claimed as an improvement over the Clinton-era deal, as one that raised America’s trade deficit with Mexico by 20 per cent.

“So he talks a big game. He's always all he's all talk. That's what he is. But he's no action. And his record was defined by plant closings, job loss and union busting under his trade deal,” he said.

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Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson, said in a statement that Trump has “lied straight to the faces of Michigan’s auto workers time and time again.”

“While he was president, thousands of Michiganders lost their jobs and the manufacturing industry cratered as Trump put the interests of billionaires and corporations over those of working families,” she said, adding that Trump is “an anti-union scab who couldn’t care less about Michigan workers.”

“Voters have had enough. They will reject Trump and his Project 2025 agenda that would leave them behind again and instead send Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to the White House so that they can continue to uplift working families and bolster Michigan manufacturing,” she said.