Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota took the stage in a Detroit suburb on Friday to offer a sharp rebuttal to former President Donald J. Trump, who had positioned himself as a savior of the auto industry at an appearance in Detroit a day earlier.
Speaking to about 100 people inside a community college’s fabrication shop in Warren, Mich., Mr. Walz argued that the Trump economic agenda would be harmful to blue-collar workers and manufacturing in the state, a key battleground for the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and his running mate, and Mr. Trump.
“Trump has spent his life talking a big game, but he has been an absolute disaster for working people,” Mr. Walz said. “One of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs of any American president in history.”
He blamed Mr. Trump for the loss of about 280,000 jobs in Michigan during the pandemic, suggesting the former president’s “disastrous mismanagement” of Covid, his trade wars and the federal contracts he gave to businesses that off-shored jobs were to blame. And he said in a mocking tone that Mr. Trump had kept his word when he promised, in a 2016 speech in the same town where Mr. Walz was speaking, that autoworkers wouldn’t “lose one plant” if he were elected.
“Technically, it wasn’t a lie, because he lost six of them,” Mr. Walz said. A number of auto plants, including several owned by General Motors, closed during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The Trump campaign argued in a statement that Mr. Trump had created jobs for auto workers before the pandemic and negotiated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade deal that included incentives to make cars in North America. The campaign also said he would help the manufacturing industry if re-elected by imposing tariffs against other countries.
“Under President Trump, we will unleash American energy and give the auto industry the tools to be bigger, better and stronger,” said Victoria LaCivita, a campaign spokeswoman.
Mr. Walz, speaking in Warren, also condemned Mr. Trump’s unusual decision to disparage Detroit while in the city itself, quoting Mr. Trump’s words from Thursday as the crowd booed.
“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” Mr. Trump had said of Vice President Kamala Harris. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”
After repeating that remark, Mr. Walz said, “If the guy were to ever spend time in the Midwest, like all of us know — we know Detroit’s experienced an American comeback, a renaissance.”
The governor’s strident language at times matched the harshness with which Mr. Trump speaks. The former president, in his speech on Thursday, suggested that the auto industry had been “on its knees, begging for help, gasping,” and that international corporations had been allowed to “come in and raid and rape” the country, even repeating the word “rape” for emphasis.
On Friday, Mr. Walz responded with tough talk of his own regarding Mr. Trump and his allies: “All’s they know about manufacturing is manufacturing bullshit.”
He knocked Mr. Trump on China, suggesting that the former president liked to act tough, but that “he was asleep at the wheel while China seized the advantage.” Mr. Walz referenced recent reporting that thousands of copies of Trump-branded Bibles were produced in China.
“This dude even outsourced God to China,” he said, as the crowd laughed. Mr. Walz said he did not blame Mr. Trump for not noticing “the made-in-China sticker — cause they put it inside, a place he’s never looked.”
Mr. Walz also had harsh words for Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX who is working relentlessly to get Mr. Trump elected. He criticized Mr. Musk for laughing while Mr. Trump discussed firing striking workers during a livestreamed conversation the duo had on the Musk-owned social media platform X, and pointed out that the businessman was building a Tesla factory in Mexico, rather than in Michigan.
“This is the guy who wants to be our economic czar?” Mr. Walz asked. “The guy who wants to fire workers and bust unions?”
By contrast, Mr. Walz said, Ms. Harris’s administration would help “release the full potential of American industry.” He said a Harris presidency would reduce regulatory hurdles, promote tax credits and expand job-creating investments.
And he defended the electric vehicle industry, a booming sector that he suggested Ms. Harris had played a role in growing. Acknowledging that there are “some folks a little skeptical” about electric vehicles, Mr. Walz said the goal was to make them affordable for those who want them, but “nobody’s mandating anything of you.”
“If you want to drive, like I do, a ’79 International Harvester Scout that is sweet as hell,” he said, “knock yourself out and drive it.”
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