After Debates and Years of Evidence, One Thing is Clear: Trump’s MAGA Agenda Will Destroy Michigan’s Manufacturing Future

Lansing, Mich. – Last night’s vice presidential debate reaffirmed what we’ve long known about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance: they will destroy Michigan manufacturing jobs and send them to China.

If Trump is given the opportunity to make good on his vow to repeal the historic Biden-Harris clean energy plan, the unprecedented cleantech revolution now underway in Michigan will be devastated, putting at risk more than $26 billion in new private sector investments that are creating more than 20,000 good-paying jobs for Michiganders in every corner of our state.

Sending American Jobs to China

Trump’s repeated attacks on the public and private investments driving Michigan’s economic resurgence undermine our ability to compete with China for the automotive technologies of the future and all but guarantee that China will dominate the global market for electric vehicles and clean energy technologies. Instead of creating 167,000 jobs in Michigan over the next decade, those jobs will be offshored to foreign competitors like China.

In new reporting, The Detroit News took a deep look at Donald Trump’s long record of failing to deliver for Michigan’s auto industry and casts doubt on his ability to deliver on his snake oil campaign promises.

In last night’s debate, JD Vance repeated the same debunked lies about Vice President Harris’ tie-breaking vote to bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States. He can’t defend Trump’s record of letting those jobs leave the country in the first place, let alone Trump’s plans to send them abroad again during his day one dictatorship.

• FACT: Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the clean energy plan that “encouraged onshoring of clean energy industries,” and has created more than 330,000 jobs.

• FACT: The clean energy plan has spurred over $10 billion in investment in JD Vance’s home state of Ohio, including a $500 million investment to upgrade a steel plant in his hometown of Middletown.

• FACT: Clean energy jobs are growing at double the rate of overall jobs, and their unionization rates are higher than those of the broader energy industry.

• FACT: A recent University of Michigan study of current EV plants found that EV production requires more employees than traditional auto plants. Investing in EV production creates good-paying manufacturing jobs.

• FACT: While Donald Trump was president, his hostility towards the clean energy industry allowed China to pull ahead in EV and clean energy manufacturing.

• FACT: Bloomberg: “The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch”

• FACT: Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would “end up helping China, economists say, by jeopardizing hundreds of billions of dollars in manufacturing investments that have already been made in the United States and sending that work back to other countries, including China.”
   
• FACT: Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says that Trump’s promise to repeal the clean energy plan “would be a blow to manufacturing.” … “China would certainly benefit.”
   
• FACT: Trump’s first-term cost Americans an estimated 1.1 million jobs; now Trump’s Project 2025 agenda is plotting an “all-out war” on clean energy that would destroy 1.7 million jobs and cause $320 billion a year in damage to the U.S. economy.

• FACT: Vance said that trade deals didn’t send jobs to China and said that “we’ve already lost that battle in some ways. The jobs are already gone.”

• FACT: Despite Trump’s repeated lies about “saving” the U.S. auto industry, the U.S. auto industry lost more than 86,000 jobs under Donald Trump. 

• FACT: General Motors’ executive vice president for manufacturing agrees that EV manufacturing will require as many employees as gas-powered vehicles.

Vance Falsely Claims Trump Supports Clean Air and Water

We already know that Donald Trump let polluters off the hook for putting harmful chemicals into our air and water. In fact, contrary to Vance’s debate claim about supporting clean air and water, Trump holds the worst environmental record of any president in U.S. history:

• FACT: Trump gutted more than 125 environmental protections, including “bans on toxic chemicals known to pose serious health threats” and critical safeguards against noxious chemicals in the air we breathe and water we drink.
• FACT: Trump allowed corporate polluters to pump chemicals linked to cancer and brain damage into our air and water, disproportionately hurting children.
• FACT: Trump rejected a ban on a pesticide that “has been linked to neurological damage in children, including developmental disorders in toddlers.”
• FACT: Trump reversed protections against chemicals “that have been found to cause miscarriages; reduced male fertility; and damage to the liver, kidneys, and immune and nervous systems.”
• FACT: The Guardian: “Second Trump term could boost toxic ‘forever chemicals’, experts warn.”
• FACT: As Trump bowed to the chemical and fossil fuel industries, his own EPA was often forced to concede that the moves would cost thousands of American lives.
• FACT: Project 2025 would slash the EPA’s capabilities to protect the public, reduce climate pollution, and end or weaken essential environmental and public health protections.

Climate Denial Takes Center Stage

The Trump campaign’s penchant for climate denial also hit new lows in last night’s debate, with J.D. Vance dismissing the global consensus around climate change as “weird science” and falsely claiming that the US is “the cleanest economy in the world.”

Less than 15 minutes into the debate, the candidates received a question on climate change. Citing the devastation from Hurricane Helene and public support for climate action, the moderators asked the candidates about their plans to address the climate crisis. The responses we heard outlined starkly different visions for America’s future.

Vance, who still doesn’t know who won the last election, spent two minutes calling science “weird,” doubling down on Donald Trump’s position of climate denialism and parroting reckless policies written by Big Oil. Trump and Vance’s Project 2025 agenda is fundamentally out of touch with what voters want — and with reality.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz know that the climate crisis is here and costing us. As Walz mentioned, under the Biden-Harris administration, we’ve seen the largest climate and clean energy investment in history, which has already created more than 330,000 jobs across the country. Harris and Walz will address the climate crisis while expanding opportunities for good-paying jobs and lowering energy costs.

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