As JD Vance travels to Michigan today, DNC Spokesperson Aida Ross released the following statement: 

“For four years, Donald Trump rigged the economy for the ultra-rich while breaking promises to workers in Michigan and beyond: Jobs were shipped overseas, factories were shuttered, and manufacturing booms never arrived. Now, the Trump-Vance ticket is plotting to take their failed policies even further with their out-of-touch Project 2025 agenda that gives handouts to billionaires and big corporations while hardworking Americans pay the price. Working families know Trump and Vance aren’t on their side — and that Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are the only ticket in this election standing up for workers.”

Donald Trump repeatedly broke his promises to workers — including in Michigan — overseeing factory closures and manufacturing job losses.

MLive: “On the 2016 campaign trail in Warren, Trump pledged ‘you won’t lose one plant’ if he were elected. GM announced last year it would end production at five North American plants.”

CNN: “Trump told GM workers he could save their plant, but it’s gone for good”

“The President cast himself in 2016 as a savior for workers, taking the unusual tack of publicly pressuring corporations like Carrier into changing their plans for moving or changing production. But despite months of demands, Trump has been unable to get GM to keep jobs at Lordstown.

“Manufacturing activity in September [of 2019] fell to its lowest point in a decade. The Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which Trump flipped, have all lost manufacturing jobs since June. Many of those jobs have moved overseas.”

Washington Post: “Trump promised this Wisconsin town a manufacturing boom. It never arrived.”

Bloomberg: “It was going to be one of the biggest deals of Donald Trump’s presidency. But it was a mirage.

“That heavily subsidized deal with the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that Trump helped broker has turned out to be, at best, a fraction of what was touted: a much smaller factory footprint with just over 1,000 jobs rather than the 13,000 jobs promised. The site is still largely a sprawling field.”

Strong Towns: “Wisconsin Foxconn Deal Cost Taxpayers Millions—And It Will Continue To Cost More Millions”

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s trade war against China didn’t achieve the central objective of reversing a U.S. decline in manufacturing, economic data show, despite tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to discourage imports.”

Detroit Free Press: “Trump, tweets couldn’t save U.S. auto jobs in 2017”

New York Times: “After Years of Growth, Automakers Are Cutting U.S. Jobs”

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

Washington Post: “Trump promised ‘America First’ would keep jobs here. But the tax plan might push them overseas.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics: When Trump left office, there were over 170,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when he started.

JD Vance praised Trump’s failed tax scam that rigged the economy for the ultra-wealthy…

Vance: “The left attacked Donald Trump for those tax cuts said they would make the deficit worse when in reality we took in more revenue because the government got out of the way on the regulatory side and the tax cuts spurred a lot of growth which means more people working, which meant more economic production which meant the entire economy was healthier… I think we have a pretty common sense regulatory and tax agenda.”

… even though Trump’s tax scam did not create more government revenue – instead, it gave massive handouts to billionaires at the expense of working families, caused the deficit to skyrocket, and created new incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas.

New York Times: “The 2017 corporate tax cuts signed into law by Mr. Trump have not increased government revenue … In fact, they have had the opposite effect.”

Washington Post: “For the first time in history, U.S. billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class last year”

CBS News: “Two years after Trump tax cuts, middle-class Americans are falling behind”

The Guardian: “They were billed as a ‘middle-class miracle’ but according to a new book Donald Trump’s $1.5tn tax cuts have helped billionaires pay a lower rate than the working class for the first time in history.”

Washington Post Analysis: “One of President Donald Trump’s lesser-known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office.

“The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.”

Washington Post: “Trump promised ‘America First’ would keep jobs here. But the tax plan might push them overseas.”

Vance backs Trump’s extreme and expensive Project 2025 agenda that includes giving handouts to the ultra-wealthy (again) at the expense of working Americans and risks supercharging inflation.

Vance: “I’ve reviewed a lot of [Project 2025]. There are some good ideas in there.”

Vance on Trump’s plan that would raise tariffs to kill the income tax for wealthiest Americans and raise costs for hardworking families: “This is a fascinating proposal and we could talk for a while about it.”

Trump: “You’re all people that have a lot of money… You’re rich as hell.… We’re gonna give you tax cuts.”

Vanity Fair: “Donald Trump Wants to Give His Favorite Corporations Another Giant Tax Cut in a Second Term: Report”

Axios: “Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November.”

Project 2025: “The corporate income tax rate should be reduced to 18 percent.”

The Atlantic: “Trump’s Plan to Supercharge Inflation”

Vance opposes legislation that protects unions, standing firmly against working people.

Politico: “Vance has consistently opposed the PRO Act, the ‘holy grail of pro-union labor reform’ that organized labor and its allies on the Hill have been fighting for over two years to get passed. … Vance’s skepticism of the PRO Act is part of a more fundamental skepticism that he harbors toward organized labor.”

Fast Company: “Vance also voted in favor of a resolution to strike down the NLRB’s updated joint-employer rule, which would have given workers more leverage when organizing at companies—like Amazon—that rely heavily on third-party contractors, by forcing both employers to participate in labor negotiations.”

Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in American history – he has said unions are made up of “dues-sucking people” and that if he had his choice he would go without union labor.

Trump: “I know the unions. They’re dues-sucking people. They just want their dues and they couldn’t care less.”

New York Times: “Does [Trump] support unions? He has had ‘great success’ in New York building with unions and also in Florida without unions. ‘If I had my choice,’ he said, ‘I think I’d take it without.’”

Associated Press: “During Trump’s presidency, the National Labor Relations Board reversed several key rulings that made it easier for small unions to organize, strengthened the bargaining rights of franchise workers and provided protection against anti-union measures for employees.

“The Supreme Court’s conservative majority — including three justices that Trump nominated — overturned a decades-old pro-union decision in 2018 involving fees paid by government workers. The justices in 2021 rejected a California regulation giving unions access to farm property so they could organize workers.”

Trump spent four years abandoning workers, and his support from union households fell.

Bloomberg Law: “Biden won 57% of union households nationwide compared with 40% for Trump, according to Edison Research, which produces exit polling for major news organizations. That was double Hillary Clinton’s eight-point edge with union households in 2016.”

Axios: “Trump only lost union households by eight points (51%-43%) in 2016 … But Biden reclaimed those states in 2020 while winning union households by 16 points (56%-40%), according to exit polling.”