President Biden on Tuesday became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he spoke to striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union at a General Motors facility in Van Buren Township, Mich.
The trip comes one day before former President Trump speaks to union members in Detroit as each attempt to frame themselves as the presidential candidate representing workers’ needs.
“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before,” Biden said Tuesday. “You made a lot of sacrifices, gave up a lot and the companies were in trouble. Now they’re doing incredibly well. And, guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”
Michigan is not only an auto manufacturing hub, but a battleground election state. In 2016, Trump was the first Republican to win Michigan in a presidential election since 1988. Biden defeated Trump in the state in 2020.
Trump, who’ll be in Detroit tomorrow night instead of the second GOP primary debate in Simi Valley, California, criticized Biden’s policies to expand the use of electric vehicles on Tuesday, calling them a “draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate” that “will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs.”
Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has argued the Trump administration sent jobs overseas.
Biden announced his visit to Michigan on Friday, the day the UAW expanded its strike to 38 facilities, and after Trump’s campaign announced his Detroit trip.