WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WXYZ) — Sen. JD Vance returned to Michigan and campaigned in metro Detroit Thursday evening.
Former President Donald Trump’s running mate was in Waterford Township this time to speak at the Elite Jet Center at Contact.
You can watch the rally in the video player below:
The main topic of conversation was auto workers and auto jobs. Vance said to the crowd of a couple hundred people that the way to move auto jobs forward is tariffs.
“If foreign corporations want to use slave labor in China or Mexico, the only way to fight to protect American workers is tariffs — slap a big fat tariff when they try to bring that crap back into the country. That’s how you protect Michigan auto workers," Vance said.
Auto Workers for Trump made an appearance and spoke on the stage about the importance of keeping auto jobs in the United States.
"Here in Michigan, everybody’s jobs are somehow related to the auto industry no matter what you do. So we all depend on the auto industry. We’ve got to save it," founder of Auto Workers for Trump Brian Pannebecker said.
Hear from a UAW worker who attended the rally in the video player below:
7 News Detroit reporter Ruta Ulcinaite asked the senator what he thinks the future of the auto industry will look like.
“I think probably what it looks like is that you’ve got a lot of people driving gas-powered cars, you’ve got probably 20% of the country that's driving some kind of an EV or a hybrid, and that’s about how it shake out," he responded. “But the important point is it doesn’t matter what JD Vance or even Donald Trump thinks the industry’s gonna look like in 15 years. American consumers ought to make the decisions on what they want to drive.”
You can watch the full interaction with Ruta Ulcinaite and JD Vance in the video player below:
With just weeks away until Election Day, campaigning is in full swing and both Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump have made multiple trips to the battleground state of Michigan.
Both candidates will be in Michigan over the weekend, with Harris campaigning in Kalamazoo and Trump campaigning in Novi and Traverse City one day before that.