By Craig Mauger, Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News
President Donald Trump will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to speak to members of the Detroit Economic Club and to tour a Ford Motor Co. factory in the Detroit area.
The president’s visit will coincide with the opening week of the Detroit Auto Show at the Huntington Place convention center on Detroit’s riverfront. His address will focus on the economy and bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Trump is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. at MotorCity Casino Hotel’s Sound Board theater, according to the economic club.
It will be Trump’s third time addressing members of the Detroit Economic Club. He previously spoke in October 2024 during the last presidential election and in August 2016, during his first successful campaign for the White House.
On Saturday, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump’s administration had been focused on delivering on a pledge to turn the page on Democratic former President Joe Biden’s “economic disaster.”
“Much work remains, but cooled inflation, accelerating GDP growth and trillions in investments pouring in are proof that the best is yet to come for Americans in Michigan and across the country,” Desai said.
The president’s speech Tuesday will follow a regularly scheduled lunchtime meeting and session on Michigan’s economic outlook, the economic club said Saturday.
In response to the announcement of the president’s visit, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel released a statement criticizing Trump’s “disastrous agenda that’s ripping away health care, spiking costs, and hurting workers” and Michigan Republicans who support it.“After spending months claiming that affordability was a ‘hoax’ and creating a health care crisis for Michiganders, Donald Trump is now coming to Detroit — a city he hates — to tout his billionaire-first agenda while working families suffer,” Hertel said in the statement.
The Detroit Economic Club said tickets to Trump’s speech will only be available to club members and their guests.
Trump has frequently focused his Michigan stops on the auto industry. As a candidate in 2024, Trump suggested no state would benefit more from his plans to implement tariffs on products made outside the United States than Michigan.
“We’re going to make so much money,” Trump told the crowd in Saginaw County on Oct. 3, 2024. “We’re going to bring back so much business, and I think this state will be the biggest beneficiary, because your car business, your auto manufacturing will be bigger than it ever was, and you will have more jobs than ever before.”
It wasn’t clear Saturday whether Trump would visit the auto show, which begins this week with media and industry days.
In 2022, then-President Biden visited the auto show, where he test drove an all-electric Cadillac SUV.
The Republican president last visited Michigan on April 29, when he celebrated the first 100 days of his second term with an event at Macomb Community College.
Trump also spoke at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, where he announced that the Pentagon would be sending a new fighter jet mission to the base.
