As his Republican rivals sparred onstage in California during their second primary debate, Donald Trump was busy winning over blue-collar voters in battleground Michigan on Wednesday night by criticizing President Biden and his push for electric cars amid an autoworker strike.

“I will not, under any circumstances, allow the American auto industry to go under,” Trump said at Drake Enterprises, a non-union auto parts supplier in Clinton Township, about a half hour outside Detroit.

The Republican frontrunner’s trip came a day after Biden became the first sitting US president to walk the picket line when he joined United Auto Workers in Detroit. The matchups had the feel of the opening salvo of the 2024 general election, which is increasingly looking like a rematch between Trump and Biden, even though the primaries don’t start until next year.

Trump’s decision to skip another debate comes as he maintains a commanding lead in the Republican party’s primaries even as he faces four separate criminal charges in four cases.

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Trump in his speech attempted to portray Biden as hostile to the auto industry and workers, using extreme rhetoric to claim the industry was being killed. He emphasized that Biden’s embrace of electric vehicles, a key part of his clean energy agenda, would ultimately lead to job losses, reinforcing the concerns of some auto workers who worry that fewer people are needed to produce electric cars and that there is no guarantee that factories will produce them. be affiliated with a trade union.

He’s selling you to China, he’s selling you to the environmental extremists and the radical left, Trump told his crowd, flanked by American flags and pallets of car parts.

He also downplayed the strike as the UAW pushes for higher wages, shorter work weeks and assurances from the nation’s top automakers that new electric car jobs will be unionized. While Trump said he supported the workers and hoped they would get a good deal, he also said no deal would matter if the proposed pollution limits went into effect.

You’re all on the picket lines and all that, but it doesn’t matter what you get because in two years you’ll all be bankrupt, he said.

Although Trump has portrayed himself as pro-labor, he has repeatedly clashed with union leaders and tried to turn union members against their leaders. In a recent campaign video, he urged autoworkers not to pay union dues and claimed their leaders had made some deals for themselves.

Just hours before Trump’s visit, the UAW posted a video on its Facebook page protesting factory closures by Detroit’s automakers, including footage from 2017 of Trump telling a crowd in Northern Ohio that auto jobs are coming back would come. Two years later, General Motors closed a massive assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, costing thousands of jobs.

Still, Trump repeatedly urged the union to support him, at one point appealing directly to UAW President Shawn Fain.

Although the union has withheld its support for Biden after backing him in 2020, Fain appeared alongside Biden during his visit on Tuesday and has repeatedly criticized Trump.

I don’t think he cares about the working class. I think he cares about the billionaire class, about corporate interests. I think he’s just trying to pander to people and say what they want to hear, and that’s a shame, Fain said this week.

Biden’s re-election campaign in a statement called Trump’s speech a pathetic, recycled attempt to feign support for working Americans.

Drake Enterprises, where Trump spoke, makes parts for cars and heavy trucks, including shift levers for semi-trucks, President Nathan Stemple said. He said a shift to electric cars would cripple his business.

Trump aides had said the audience would include several hundred current and former UAW members, as well as members of plumbers’ and pipefitters’ unions, but would also include many non-union workers supporting the former president. Some said they were invited by people who did business with Drake; Others said they simply arrived at the factory on Wednesday afternoon and were allowed to attend.

Tony Duronio, 64, a longtime Trump supporter and real estate agent who lives in Clinton Township, said he received an invitation from a group called Autoworkers for Trump. Duronio praised the economy during Trump’s time in office and echoed the former president’s criticism of electric vehicles: “No one wants them,” he said, applauding Trump’s decision to skip the debate.

He is the frontrunner. He has no competition,” he said. Look, if it’s not him, I might stay home because everyone else is no different than Biden.

Trump briefly mentioned the debate taking place 2,000 miles away at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, calling his Republican rivals candidates.

They will do anything, he said. Secretary of something. They even say VP, does anyone see a VP in the group? I do not think so.

The former president has tried to use the strike to drive a wedge between Biden and union workers, a constituency that paved the way for his surprise victory in 2016. Trump won voters in Democratic strongholds like Michigan, Wisconsin and won over Pennsylvania, fundamentally reshaping voting alliances, while railing against global trade deals and promising to revive dying manufacturing towns.

But Biden won those states in 2020 as he emphasized his working-class roots and commitment to organized labor. He often calls himself the most pro-union president in American history and argues that the investments his administration is making in green energy and electric vehicle production will ensure the future of the industry unfolds in the US.

There is disagreement in the auto industry over whether the shift to electric vehicles will cost union jobs. Some executives say that because electric vehicles require fewer moving parts, companies will need 30% to 40% fewer workers to assemble them. But others say EVs will require similar labor.

The Trump campaign has vigorously defended his pro-labor record, but labor leaders say his first term was far from worker-friendly, citing unfavorable rulings from the nation’s highest labor council and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as unfulfilled promises about auto industry jobs and the closing of the GM plant in Ohio.

Workers are divided along the picket line. Adrian Mitchell, who works at the GM parts warehouse that Biden visited, said he believes Biden would be better for the middle class than a second Trump term. Still, Mitchell says workers worry the transition to electric cars could cost them jobs.

It was a different scene at Trump’s event, full of MAGA hats and pro-Trump signs.

Let’s put it this way: There’s nothing I don’t like about Trump,” said Johnny Pentowski, who was a member of the Teamsters Union before retiring as a truck driver this year.

Pentowski, 72, who lives in Eastpointe, Michigan, accused union leaders of not listening to their members and shared Trump’s skepticism about electric vehicles.

‘When you take away fossil fuels from a country, you take away the lifeblood of a country. Windmills and solar energy do not do that.

The UAW’s targeted attacks against the Big Three automakers General Motors, Stellantis and Ford began at midnight on September 14 and have since expanded to 38 parts distribution centers in 20 states.

The union is asking for a 36% pay increase over four years and has also demanded a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay and a return of pay increases for living costs, among other benefits. It also wants to be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers.

While Biden has not implemented an electric vehicle mandate, he has set a goal that half of all new vehicle sales will be electric by 2030. His government has also proposed tough new car pollution limits that would require up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold by 2030. the US should be electric by 2032, a nearly tenfold increase over current electric vehicle sales. That proposal is not final.