(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/10/2024) (DETROIT) -- Former President Donald Trump told the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday that seeing the auto industry being abused inspired his 2016 run for president.

He said that when he came into office, the auto industry was “on its knees, begging for help,” prompting his pulling out of the Transpacific Partnership and threatening tariffs on offshore auto manufacturers. 

Then, Trump said that under a Kamala Harris administration, the entire country would “end up like Detroit.” 

“You’d have a mess on your hands,” Trump said to the DEC. 

On X, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said lots of cities should be like Detroit.

“Detroit just hosted the largest NFL Draft in history, the Tigers are back in the playoffs, the Lions are headed to the Super Bowl, crime is down, and our population is growing,” Duggan said. “And we did it all without Trump’s help.”

Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) also posted on X, tying Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell into the conversation with a video of the coach at a press conference saying “when you knock us down, we're gonna get up, and on the way up we're gonna bite a knee cap off.”

Trump announced that his administration would make taxes on car loans deductible, which received applause from the crowd.

He also announced that on his first day back in office, he would re-negotiate the United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement. Earlier in his speech, he received applause when he talked about ending the North American Fair Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

He said his next administration would bring in the “Build It In America Plan,” not to be confused with Congress’s Build It In America Act of last summer.

“When foreign leaders and CEOs call me up to complain about our tariffs, my answer will be very simple: ‘you don’t have any tariffs building right here in Detroit. You don’t have tariffs on anything,’” he said. 

Trump has proposed a 60 percent tariff on imported Chinese goods and 20 percent tariff on all other imported goods. Harris has rebranded the proposal as a 20 percent sales tax. 

Trump said “tariff” is one of the most beautiful words in the world.

“It’s going to make us wealthy again,” Trump said.

Thursday was a very different environment than his campaign rallies. Typical lines that would have garnered booing from the crowd, like calling the press the “fake news,” didn’t get a reaction until he gave a punchline the crowd laughed at. His walk out song, God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood, would be greeted by applause and cheering for its entirety and then some, but Thursday Trump stood mostly still on stage after applause subsided, and the song played on.

He spoke for about one hour and 47 minutes before answering questions from the DEC, which put him at about two hours and 2 minutes on stage.

Perhaps stealing the limelight from Trump’s visit, or maybe heightening Detroiters’ awareness of his appearance in front of the DEC, is a 43-foot statue of a naked Trump at the Lincoln Street Art Park. 

The statue went up Thursday and is being protected by two guards. The Detroit Free Press reported that the statue's artist is remaining anonymous and that it is being displayed in a private park.

“This time, (Trump is) running on a Project 2025 economic agenda that will cost Michiganders nearly $4,000 every single year, and, no matter what lies he spews today, Michiganders know that his ‘concepts of a plan’ will only hurt them and their pocketbooks. For more jobs and a fairer economy, voters know that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the champions we need to not just survive, but thrive, here in Michigan,” said Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes.