Vice President Kamala Harris will hit former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, on the auto industry at her rally in Flint, Michigan, on Friday evening, a senior campaign official said, after calling the former president an “existential threat” to labor.
Harris’ attacks will focus on her claim that Trump and Vance are putting Michigan auto jobs at risk, the official said. They attacked Trump on the same topic in a digital ad launched last month.
The official added that Harris is going to highlight comments that Vance made earlier this week about whether the Trump administration would honor a $500 million grant going to General Motors to convert a Lansing plant to make electric vehicles.
Asked by the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday whether Trump would honor or cancel the Biden administration grant, Vance didn’t give a direct answer.
“First of all, the $500 million grant came along with some really ridiculous strings and no protections for American jobs not getting shipped to foreign countries because a lot of not just the cars themselves, but the battery components, the minerals, this stuff is all produced in China, and so when we write massive checks on American taxpayer expense to these companies, a lot of times what we’re doing is selling American middle class jobs to the Communist Chinese, and we ought to be doing exactly the opposite,” Vance told the Detroit Free Press.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event at the Redford Township Fire Department North Station in Redford Township, Mich., Oct. 4, 2024.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
“We ought to be rebuilding the American middle class and investing in our own workers, not shipping our tax dollars off to electric vehicles made in China,” Vance added.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain will join Harris for the rally. Fain, whose union endorsed Harris, also joined the vice president for a rally in Detroit on Labor Day.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks to the attendees during a campaign rally for Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in Romulus, Michigan, August 7, 2024.
Rebecca Cook/Reuters
On Friday afternoon, ahead of the Flint rally, Harris stopped by a firehouse in Redford Township, right outside Detroit, where she labeled Trump “an existential threat” to labor.
“Donald Trump’s track record is a disaster for working people, and he’s trying to gaslight people all over our country, but we know the facts and we know the truth: He is an existential threat to America’s labor movement,” Harris claimed.
In a short statement Thursday, Edward Kelly, the president of the firefighters’ union, announced his board voted not to endorse a candidate for president — following the Teamsters’ lead.
“This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to preserve and strengthen our unity,” Kelly said.