Livengood: Trump Delivering Anti China, Anti EV Message Rural Michigan Voters Want to Hear

Livengood: Trump Delivering Anti-China, Anti-EV Message Rural Michigan Voters Want to Hear

October 7, 2024

The Detroit News
Oct. 3, 2024
Chad Livengood

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign message to rural and base Republican voters that Michigan shouldn't compete with China in the electric vehicle industry isn't some political gaffe.

It's the bombast they want to hear.

That's confirmed by a recent statewide poll commissioned by the Detroit Regional Chamber that shows 67% of Republican voters and 59% of rural voters said Michigan should not be trying to compete in a global EV market dominated by Chinese automakers.

RELATED: New Statewide Poll: Voters' Reluctance to Embrace the Economy of the Future Putting Michigan's Competitiveness, Top Industry at Risk

What's more is 51% of independent voters surveyed by the Lansing-based Glengariff Group also don't think the U.S. should be in the EV game. Just 17% of voters who identify as strong Democrats said America should take a defeatist stance on global war for the EV market with China.

And when Metro Detroit, where tens of thousands of people work in the auto industry, is separated from the rest of the state, the division is stark: 55% of likely voters in Metro Detroit said the U.S. should compete aggressively in the manufacturing of EVs, while less than 42% of voters in the rest of Michigan said we should try to compete.

Nearly 48% percent of outstate voters oppose competing in the growing global EV market. The poll, conducted Sept. 12-15, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The poll's finding illustrate why Trump is spending so much time on the campaign trail in Michigan pouring cold water on electric vehicles, even while the likes of Tesla have built massive EV assembly plants in California and Texas that are employing thousands of new autoworkers. This debate isn't unspooling in southern and western states hungry for EV investments.

"This is what voters on the right (in Michigan) are hearing from the candidates and these are, frankly, a lot of short-term political gain versus long-term economic loss," said pollster Richard Czuba of the Glengariff Group, a firm that also does polling for The Detroit News.

Trump, his running mate JD Vance and fellow Republicans from U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers to U.S. House candidates have railed against the planned investment in electric vehicles and suppliers in rural Michigan, zeroing in on a controversial project in Mecosta County, where the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese battery maker wants to build a $2.4 billion battery plant and create 2,350 jobs averaging about $51,000 a year in one of the poorest counties in Michigan.

The GOP has made the Gotion Inc. project on the outskirts of Big Rapids this year's political punching bag - and base Republican voters and some independents are eating it up.

Without naming Gotion, the Detroit Chamber's poll tested voter sentiment on whether Michigan should try to compete with Mexico for a Chinese battery plant project that provides 2,000 "good wage" jobs.

Among the 600 likely voters surveyed, 57% said they support Michigan competing with Mexico for Chinese investment, while 37% said they're opposed it.

But support for competing for jobs with Mexico when it involves a Chinese company crumbles on the right and is soft in the center. More than half of all Republican and rural voters said no, while independent voters were split, 46% in favor and 42% opposed.

Sandy K. Baruah, Chief Executive Officer of the Detroit Regional Chamber, said Michigan made some "strategic errors" in the 1970s when Japanese automakers passed over the state that put the world on wheels and spent heavily on car assembly plants in Southern states.

"We firmly believe that those strategic errors should not be repeated," Baruah said in a Zoom call Thursday morning with reporters.

Baruah said he would not comment on "presidential candidates and what they're saying" on the campaign trail about EVs and Chinese investment in Michigan's auto industry.

"The chamber does not engage in presidential politics. We do not endorse. We do not comment on what any candidates says," Baruah said.

The Detroit Chamber leader, of course, has to walk a fine line with a board of directors comprised of Detroit's business titans, some of whom may very well be Trump supporters.

Neutrality is the name of the Detroit Regional Chamber's game right now, after the business group's political action committee effectively deadlocked and decided not to endorse either Rogers or Democrat Elissa Slotkin in what's shaped up to be Michigan's biggest U.S. Senate race in a generation.

But the chamber's own poll questions show the organization's hand: They're worried the anti-electric vehicle and anti-Chinese investment rhetoric from Trump, Rogers and others is harming Michigan's position in the global race to build EVs with batteries that last longer without having to be recharged.

They're particularly worried about how it's shaping the attitudes of voters in rural areas, where state officials are starting to pressure-test new economic development projects amid the anti-China backlash from the Gotion project that's being largely amplified by Republican politicians.

Curiously, the Detroit chamber's PAC recently endorsed the reelection of U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, a Republican from Caledonia who is leading the charge to block the Gotion project from coming to fruition. Baruah noted the chamber's PAC board that makes candidate endorsements is independent and he has just one vote.

"We don't anticipate that we're going to agree with every issue every candidate takes," Baruah said. "… When I talk to Republicans, in particular, both in Washington and in Lansing, that essentially that I believe, the chamber believes that your position and your rhetoric around electrification is not correct. Should we follow your suggested policy prescription, we do think that will detrimental to Michigan's overall economy."

But what's being said on the campaign trail right now is a full-scale rejection of Chinese investment in automotive manufacturing and the supply chain - in Michigan. And, in particular, rural Michigan.

And in some cases, it's a misportrayal of what's actually taking place in the auto industry. Nearly 7% of new vehicle sales are EVs, amounting to about 1.2 million vehicles annually.

On Wednesday, while speaking to supporters in a rural part of Ottawa County, Vance railed against EVs, citing the country's reliance on China for raw materials for batteries and other components in the supply chain.

But that's exactly what's going on while Trump told voters in Flint last week that China is "going to dominate" the EV market and supply chain.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded $355 million in grants for four projects, including $100 million to boost manufacturing in Muskegon of lithium iron phosphate for EV batteries and $145 million for two mines in the Upper Peninsula to expand the mining of nickel - a critical metal for batteries.

The Detroit Chamber's polling shows there could be a different messaging approach when it comes to selling the public, particularly rural voters, on why Michigan should be in the EV business.

Pit Michigan against another state.

When voters were asked if Michigan should match Texas with taxpayer incentives (read: subsidies) for an EV assembly plant, nearly 70% said yes.

Opposition from rural voters plummeted from 52% in the question of competing with Mexico to 33% in the question of Michigan vs. Texas.

"What we find is voters really, strongly support matching and beating other states," Czuba said. "They very much view this as a competition within the United States. But when you start to put in the scenario - and this was intentional - of China and Mexico, they become, particularly on the right, far less supportive when other countries are involved. This is very much part of the political conversation taking place across the state right now."

Call it the Rio Grande Effect - Michigan voters, rural or urban, don't want to be left in the dust by Southern states like what's happened so many times before.

But will the politicians frame it that way in this global fight against Chinese automakers itching to bring their communist government-subsidized EVs to American showrooms?

"That's the question that needs to be raised here," Czuba said.

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