Back-to-Back Biden, Trump Events With Auto Workers Preview Michigan’s 2024 Role

No state captured Donald Trump’s unexpected win in 2016 better than Michigan. And no state better encapsulated the ground Trump lost with union voters during his presidency, as Joe Biden defeated him there four years later on his way to winning the White House.

That’s why, amid an ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers union against the so-called Big Three automakers, both men will be in Michigan over the next 48 hours, expressing solidarity with the union workers and highlighting the state’s political importance ahead of a likely rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024.

“The fact that both President Biden and former President Trump are traveling to Michigan really underscores the state’s importance in the lead-up to 2024,” said Michigan state Rep. Jason Morgan, a vice chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. 

Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to join the picket line with UAW members in Wayne County. A source familiar with the event said the plan is for Shawn Fain, the president of UAW, to join Biden.

Presidential candidates, including Biden, have often shown up at picket lines, but Biden is believed to be the first sitting president to do so.

“This is going to be a historic trip that’s going to underscore the president is the most … pro-union president in history, ” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

Trump will visit the state roughly 24 hours later, holding an event at a machining manufacturer in Macomb County. The county is a longtime bellwether that was ground zero for some union workers moving from devout Democrats to Reagan Republicans, a process that Trump furthered when he won the county in both 2016 and 2020.

The former president’s visit isn’t coordinated with the UAW, a source familiar with the event said. While Fain has withheld an endorsement of Biden, he called on voters to stop electing billionaires and millionaires like Trump and has also said that a second Trump presidency would be a “disaster.”

Trump, as he did in both 2016 and 2020, is attempting to position himself as the voice of union workers, not union leaders, whom he has lambasted in his commentary on the strike. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he warned that auto workers’ jobs will move to China, and that “auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership.” 

The focus reflects Trump’s understanding that union workers were central to his win in Michigan nearly eight years ago, said John Sellek, a Republican operative in Michigan.

“Trump realizes that if he doesn't get all the credit for moving a lot of union members to the Republican category in 2016, he at least massively accelerated their movements,” said Sellek. “I think Trump is in a different place [in Michigan than 2020] because voters are ready to judge Biden on the results he is getting.”

Trump’s union slippage

Trump campaigned heavily in Michigan – which at the time hadn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1988 – ahead of the 2016 election, including making a stop in Grand Rapids his final event of the campaign. 

The strategy to focus on Michigan worked, aided by increased support from union households and an over-confident campaign from Democrat Hillary Clinton that spent little time in the state. Trump’s narrow win in Michigan – he won by just over 10,000 votes – defined the way he more broadly won the White House, by increasing turnout and energy among white working-class voters, many of whom in Michigan had direct ties to unions.

As Trump ran for reelection four years later, however, that strategy ran into two key snags.

First, despite pledging to boost manufacturing, Trump’s record on the issue – and his loyalty to unions – was mixed. As president, Trump weakened the power of government unions, eliminated collective bargaining for Postal Service workers, and filled his administration with Republicans who had opposed unions throughout their careers.

And on manufacturing, Trump was often unable to live up to his lofty promises. 

“We’re going to do a lot of expansion. I know exactly what to do folks. You’re not going to lose your jobs anymore. You’re not going to lose your jobs anymore,” Trump said at that final rally in Michigan in 2016. “We are going to bring back the automobile in the state of Michigan bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before.” 

When Trump stumped in Warren, Michigan near the end of the 2016 campaign, he told the audience that workers “won’t lose one plant,” repeating the promise multiple times.

“You won’t lose one plant, I promise you that. And if Ford and the other ones have started building their plant they’ll be back, believe me, before they start building their plant, believe me,” Trump said.

Less than a year later, General Motors announced layoffs at their plant in Warren, and, in 2019, they announced they would fully close the transmission plant, along with four others.

All of this, said Morgan from the Michigan Democratic Party, is one of the key reasons why many union households that initially gravitated toward Trump moved away from him. After Clinton won 53% of union households in Michigan in 2016, Biden bumped the Democrats’ share up to 62% in 2020, according to exit polls, an even more pronounced shift than the one that occurred nationally.

“I was just on the picket lines yesterday and talking with workers and I can tell you directly from talking with them, these are folks who feel like the wealthy are making more while they are making less,” said Morgan. “[Trump] campaigned in 2016 that no auto plants would close. … We saw at least one auto plant here in Michigan close.”

The other factor was that Biden had greater appeal to union members than Clinton. Although Clinton touted her union ties, those connections were easily questioned. Biden, on the other hand, had been a top union-supporting politician his entire career.

Sellek acknowledged the challenges Trump faces in 2020 – “Biden isn’t Hillary Clinton,” he added – but added that the former president may have learned at least some lessons from the loss. Instead of talking about wages and benefits and making grandiose promises, he is making a more existential argument and focusing on unions’ “existence overall.”

“He is not talking about wages and lost benefits, he is talking about their existence overall,” he said. “He is going to the existential argument and it makes it a lot easier to attack Biden.” 

Biden’s economic tightrope

Trump, while blasting Biden’s decision to go to Detroit, wrote on Truth Social that “the Autoworkers are “toast” if UAW leaders don’t endorse him. He said Biden sold autoworkers “down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax,” claiming that all of these cars will be made in China in three years. 

Biden has set a goal of having 50% of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030, but he has called for a “fair transition to a clean energy future.” The statement won him appreciation from Fain, who had blasted the administration just two months earlier for giving Ford a $9.2 billion loan without union protections. Fain also praised the administration for announcing new funding aimed at ensuring electric vehicles are built by union workers.

Addressing the strike, Biden has said that workers deserve to share in the companies’ record profits. Companies have made "significant offers,” Biden said as the strike began, “but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.”

But Fain, in a Sept. 17 appearance on CBS’ “Face The Nation,” addressed UAW’s withholding of an endorsement of Biden, saying the union’s backing is “going to be earned.” 

“We expect action, not words,” he said.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said much of the situation has changed for Trump. Rank-and-file members support the strike and there’s strong support for the union leadership that the former president is lambasting. Meanwhile, workers have learned more about the negative consequences of the Trump presidency in terms of labor rights, she said.

“If the union wins a good contract, and the union leadership endorses Biden or another Democrat, … members will be much more likely to listen to their advice than they would have in the last election when there wasn't that same bond …within the membership and with the leadership,” she said.

Even as he hopes to win UAW’s backing, Biden must tread carefully and not alienate the automakers. Much is riding on the contract negotiations and a prolonged strike could damage the economy. During its first week, economic losses totaled more than $1.6 billion, according to an estimate by Michigan economic consulting firm Anderson Economic Group, LLC.

Reporters pressed Jean-Pierre on Monday on whether Biden was siding with the union on its specific bargaining proposals, but the White House press secretary wouldn’t comment on the details of negotiations. She said it’s up to the parties to decide what makes both sides happy. 

“He believes that there could be a win-win agreement here, but he's always going to stand on the side of workers,” she said.

To Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, the mere fact that both Trump and Biden are injecting themselves into the strike is telling about Michigan’s political standing.

“The fact that we have competing Biden and Trump appearances shows just how close this next election is going to be and the next President will be decided by only a handful of states,” said Bonjean. “Blue-collar workers make up most of Trump’s base and are attracted to his populist message. Biden is scrambling for a UAW endorsement that could help him win the allegiance of union voters that might naturally vote for Trump.”