Warren (US): President Donald Trump is holding a rally in Michigan on Tuesday to mark the first 100 days of his second term, staging his largest public event since returning to the White House in a state that has been especially rocked by his steep trade tariffs and combative attitude toward Canada.
Trump is making an afternoon visit to Selfridge Air National Guard Base for an announcement alongside Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s expected to speak at a rally at Macomb Community College, north of Detroit, allowing him to revel in leading a sprint to upend government and social, political and foreign policy norms.
His Republican administration’s strict immigration polices have sent arrests for illegal crossings along the US-Mexico border plummeting, and government-slashing efforts led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk have shaken Washington to its core.
Its protectionist import taxes imposed on America’s trade partners have also sought to reorder a global economy that the US had painstakingly built and nurtured in the decades after World War II.
Trump has also championed sweeping US expansionism, refusing to rule out military intervention in Greenland and Panama, suggesting that American developers could help convert the war-torn Gaza Strip into a Riviera-like resort and even suggesting annexation of Canada.
“I run the country and the world,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine in an interview. He told Time of his first 100 days, “I think that what I’m doing is exactly what I’ve campaigned on.”
That doesn’t mean it’s popular.
Only about 4 in 10 Americans approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, and his ratings on the economy and trade are lower than that.
Additionally, 46 per cent of US adults approve of Trump’s immigration policies, with about half of Americans saying he has “gone too far” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the country illegally.
Just 33 per cent of Americans, meanwhile, have a favourable view of Musk, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person, and about half believe the administration has gone too far in working to pare back the government workforce.
“The bottom line for the first hundred days is, lots of damage being done to the fundamentals of our government,” said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit dedicated to better government.
Stier noted that there’d been “a lot of interest in this idea of trying to make our government more efficient, and what we’ve seen instead is the most substantial destruction of our core governmental capabilities in history.”
Michigan was one of the battleground states Trump flipped from the Democratic column. But it’s also been deeply affected by his tariffs, including on new imported cars and auto parts.
Michigan’s unemployment rate has risen for three straight months, including jumping 1.3 per cent from March to reach 5.5 per cent, according to state data. That’s among the highest in the nation, far exceeding the national average of 4.2 per cent.
Automaker Stellantis halted production at plants in Canada and Mexico after Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff on imported vehicles, temporarily laying off 900 US employees. Industry groups have separately urged the White House to scrap plans for tariffs on imported auto parts, warning that doing so would raise prices on cars and could trigger “layoffs and bankruptcy.”
That seemingly would make the state an odd choice for Trump to hail his own accomplishments.
“I’m not sure that he is at all interested in doing the smart thing,” said Bernie Porn, a longtime Michigan pollster. “He is what I would call an in-your-face president. ‘This is what I’m going to do.'”
Trump is also visiting Selfridge, which was established after the US entered World War I in 1917, and the community college campus in Warren. Both are near the Canadian border and home to many people with deep business and personal ties to that country.
“Michigan always feels very, very positively toward Canada,” said the pollster, who noted that its voters “can’t be reacting well to the kinds of things he’s done.”
Typically, presidents use the 100-day mark to launch multiple rallies. But Trump is doing only the Michigan stop before giving the commencement address at the University of Alabama on Thursday.
Administration officials say the Republican president is at his most effective staying at the White House, having meetings and speaking to reporters nearly every day. Indeed, Trump’s Macomb Community College speech will be one of the few large in-person crowds he’s addressed since Inauguration Day on January 20.
Except for a trip to tour hurricane damage in North Carolina and wildfire devastation in Southern California and a Las Vegas speech that included briefly chatting with gamblers on a casino floor, Trump’s early months have been characterised by little domestic travel.
The exceptions have been flying most weekends to golf in Florida or attend sporting events, including the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500, where Trump relished the crowds but didn’t speak to them.
The limited travel to see supporters is a major departure from his first term, when Trump held major rallies in Florida, Tennessee and Kentucky before celebrating 100 days in office with a Pennsylvania speech in 2017.
Also in the spotlight will be Whitmer, who is frequently mentioned as a future presidential candidate. Long a Trump critic, Whitmer has sought to find common ground with the president lately, visiting him at the White House and discussing the future of Selfridge specifically.
Whitmer is concerned about the A-10 aircraft stationed at the base being phased out, though Trump recently said he hoped to keep Selfridge “open, strong, thriving.”
