The visits by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to Detroit this week give both men a chance to appeal to blue-collar America as the strike by union autoworkers threatens the economy in a battleground state.
Biden, who calls himself the most pro-union president in history, travels to Wayne County on Tuesday to join striking UAW members on the picket line. Trump, the front-runner among Republicans in the 2024 presidential race, hosts an event in suburban Detroit on Wednesday with autoworkers and other union members.
Workers on the picket lines Sunday at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne and Stellantis NV’s Mopar Parts Distribution Center in Center Line, and union members at other sites last week, said they welcomed the candidates if they spur a favorable settlement. Michigan voters — and the union workers among them — are expected to be critical in the 2024 race for president based on prior elections: Biden won 62% of Michigan’s union household vote in 2020, topping Trump’s 37%, and won the state by more than 154,000 votes. But in 2016, Trump won the state by just 10,704 votes, with exit polls showing he got 40% of the union vote, compared with 53% for Hillary Clinton.
“If he can address that, he should be able to get those voters back,” Porn said. “But right now, the only message they’re hearing about electric vehicles is addressing their fear, and trying to play on their fears about union members losing their jobs in the future.” Trump is trying to recreate his 2016 appeal to blue-collar workers in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania and drive a wedge between a UAW leadership that historically has backed Democrats and rank-and-file members who are more likely to be Republican, according to Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan GOP.
“If you want to call it a dog-and-pony-show, they’re covering the bases,” said Ted Alton, 65, a 37-year Ford worker who voted for Trump in 2020 but would like other choices besides Trump and Biden in 2024.A long-term strike by all UAW members at the three automakers would cause more than 300,000 job losses in Michigan, according to an analysis by the University of Michigan Department of Economics.
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