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Former President Donald Trump traveled to Warren for a town hall Friday, asserting his plans to boost the auto manufacturing industry with heavy tariffs on foreign cars and tax cuts for U.S. manufacturers. Trump answered questions from auto workers in the audience in a conversation moderated by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., as well as discussed border security, inflation and jobs.
Paula Nygren, estimator for automotive tech company A&D Tech, arrived at the town hall with her parents dressed in red, white and blue light-up necklaces and different Trump-themed hats.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Nygren spoke about Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, which aims to facilitate a shift toward EVs by setting pollution standards that would be hard to achieve without increasing the number of electric or low-carbon vehicles. It has been criticized by the National Automobile Dealers Association for being too aggressive too soon.
Trump said he would end the mandate immediately if he were to be elected to office, which was met with cheers from Nygren and the rest of the crowd.
“You can have electrics in the market, and then you have hybrids and pure gasoline powerful cars,” Trump said. “You can have everything. I will end the electric mandate on day one.”
Nygren said she does not believe Biden’s electric vehicle mandate sets reasonable expectations for the industry. She said there are not enough storage facilities or raw materials for EV batteries to be manufactured.
“Changing the mandates on electric auto vehicles does affect me because most of what I do is estimate automotive test cells,” Nygren said. “Sustaining that (EV) mandate, a lot of us don’t think it’s possible.”
In an interview with The Daily, Melodie Guthrie, a baker from Ferndale who attended the rally, said she wanted to hear Trump’s plans for the economy. She said her current electricity bill and groceries are regular expenses that have become difficult to pay.
“I mean, something’s got to be done,” Gutherie said. “Things are just way, way too expensive.”
Trump said he would bring down prices, starting with the cost of energy, which he said would decrease by 50% in the first 12 months of his presidency. According to NPR, while Trump could allow oil companies to drill more and at an easier pace, bringing the cost of energy down by 50% would not be profitable for oil companies.
Trump also criticized government spending under the current administration, stating the spending and energy policies were the cause of inflation.
“Between the energy and spending, inflation went up and food prices came with it and rent came with it and everything came with it,” Trump said.
In order to boost manufacturing jobs, Trump said he would lower federal corporate tax rates from 21% to 15% for companies in the United States while placing aggressive tariffs of 100-200% on cars imported from Mexico.
A possible tariff on imported cars from Mexico could violate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was negotiated during Trump’s presidency. The agreement allows automakers to build cars in Mexico — where there are lower labor costs — and import them to the U.S. without tariffs if they meet certain requirements for where it was built and where the parts came from.
Blackburn discussed a decrease in U.S. manufacturing jobs at the town hall and said she believes the blame lies with the Democratic party.
“These great manufacturing jobs, the Democrats just don’t seem to understand, or maybe they don’t care that we’re losing a lot of these jobs and they’d like to say, ‘Well it’s all these young people,’ or ‘Well, we’ve changed how we do business or its global competition with China,’ and a lot of times it is bad policies,” Blackburn said.
Daily Staff Reporter Ava Chatlosh can be reached at chatlosh@umich.edu.
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