President Trump returns to Michigan for speech on the economy

Craig Mauger, The Detroit News on Jan 13, 2026

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DETROIT — President Donald Trump arrived Tuesday in Michigan, where he is expected to promote his approach to the nation's economy and jump-start the midterm election year in the battleground state.

After Air Force One landed at Detroit Metro Airport at about 11:45 a.m., Trump is expected to visit Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn Truck Plant before speaking to a crowd of 500 people at the Detroit Economic Club at 2 p.m., inside the MotorCity Casino's Sound Board theater.

It will be the third time the Republican president has addressed the organization of Michigan business leaders.

The Republican Party's likely U.S. Senate nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake Township, used a social media post to welcome Trump to Michigan.

"Safer streets. Secure borders. Reshoring jobs. More money in our pockets," Rogers wrote. "And this is only the beginning."

Michigan is poised to play a key role in the November midterm election. Voters in the state will elect a new governor, a new attorney general, a new secretary of state and a new U.S. senator in less than 300 days. Current U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, decided not to seek reelection.

The state is also home to two swing U.S. House districts that Republicans won in 2024 but will have to fight to keep this fall, as they try to hold on to their House and Senate majorities.

On Tuesday, Katie Smith, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans in key races in Michigan will own Trump's "expensive and chaotic agenda."

"Donald Trump’s visit to Detroit is the latest reminder of what every Michigan Republican will be forced to answer for: reckless tariffs raising costs and killing Michigan jobs, devastating Medicaid cuts ripping away health care from nearly 260,000 Michiganders and everything from groceries to health care getting more expensive," Smith said.

In a Jan. 2-6 poll of 600 likely Michigan voters, commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV, 32% of participants — about one in every three —identified inflation, the cost of living, jobs or the economy as the most important issue in the coming mid-term election.

Further, 64% of the participants said costs had gone up over the last year. Trump took office a year ago, in January 2025. Only 13% said costs had gone down, while 22% said costs had stayed about the same.

The telephone survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Trump won Michigan's 2024 presidential election over Democrat Kamala Harris, 50%-48%. During the campaign, he repeatedly vowed to combat inflation as president.

"Starting on day one of my new administration, we will end inflation and we will make America affordable again," Trump said during an October 2024 rally in Saginaw County.

Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department announced Tuesday, the same as in November.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump also said the car industry would "have a renaissance the likes of which we have never seen before" If he was elected.

In October 2024, Trump said, during another speech before the Detroit Economic Club, he would create a "Michigan miracle" and the "stunning rebirth" of the Motor City.

Over the first 11 months of his second term, the number of manufacturing jobs in Michigan slightly increased by 0.4% from 594,500 positions in January to about 596,800 November 2025, according to tracking by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.