Vice President JD Vance defended President Donald Trump’s economic record in a speech in Oakland County’s Auburn Hills on March 18, despite continued rising costs for many consumer goods and spiking fuel prices resulting from the Iran war.
After 14 months in office, “we’ve got a lot to be proud of and a lot to build on and a lot to keep working on,” Vance said of the Trump administration. He blamed former President Joe Biden and the policies of the former administration for continued high inflation, while acknowledging that even today “a lot of our families are still struggling.”
Speaking to reporters specifically about fuel prices after the event, Vance said: “We know that people are hurting because of it, and we’re doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay low. This is a temporary war. It’s not going to last forever. We’re going to take care of business. We’re going to come back home. When that happens, you’re going to see energy prices come back down.”
In his fourth trip to the state since becoming vice president, Vance spoke at EDSI in Auburn Hills, a manufacturer that works in robotic systems engineering. EDSI, which stands for Engineering Design Services Inc., is located close to Oakland Community College and Stellantis’ Technology Center. It provides products and services for automotive, industrial, robotic, aerospace, military, and medical industries, according to its website.
Vance said Trump is impatient to accomplish more and regularly asks Vance and other officials: “What have we done today?”
Vance, who was introduced by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, said part of the Trump administration’s approach to improving the economy involves getting rid of environmental red tape that has hindered development.
He praised Zeldin onstage during his speech, calling the recent deregulation of greenhouse gas emissions necessary for America to stay competitive. Opponents of deregulation, however, have broadly characterized the move as putting the health of people and the planet behind corporate profits.
“We have a leader of the EPA who recognizes we’ve got to protect American clean air, clean water; of course, we all want to save the environment for our kids. But we can do that while still having the strongest economy anywhere in the world, and that’s exactly what Lee Zeldin has done for us. He’s been good for Michigan workers, he’s been good for Michigan families, he’s been good for building and making things in America.”
While making numerous references to the end of the electric vehicle mandate, Vance did not address job losses in Michigan related to the administration’s shift away from EVs that included ending the $7,500 federal tax credit last September. Detroit Three automakers wrote off billions of dollars in EV-related expenses in 2025 and laid off thousands of workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico related to the changes.
In his remarks, Vance applauded news last week that Detroit Diesel recalled laid-off workers and added a third shift, citing import duties as the cause.
“Why do you think that happened? That happened for two reasons: We’ve got tax policies that promote the investment in the American worker and because the president of the United States, for the first time in my entire lifetime, was willing to say to the rest of the world, ‘You’re done poaching our industries, you’re done poaching our jobs,’ ” Vance said to applause. “If you want to build right here in the United States of America, you get a big fat tax cut. But if you’re trying to undercut the wages of American workers, and bring in cheap garbage from overseas, you’re going to get a big fat tax increase.”
Trump, in February, reversed the 2009 endangerment finding that supported the regulation of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under then-President Barack Obama determined contribute to climate change.
Joined by second lady Usha Vance and Zeldin, Vance asserted less federal intervention in the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from cars allows automakers to sell cheaper vehicles more in line with consumer choice.
Michigan labor organizations and environmental groups criticized Vance’s trip to the state and his message, with Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, the state’s largest federation of labor unions, condemning the Trump administration’s economic approach in a statement.
“Trump said he’d lower prices on day one. Now, we have soaring costs, job losses, and a war with Iran. Trump and Vance are trying to distract from their failures — and they’re willing to sacrifice American lives and our wallets to do it,” Bieber said in the statement. “Trump’s and Vance’s approach to the economy is the same as their approach to war: Shoot first and ask questions later.”
“We’ve seen 23 clean energy projects cancelled in Michigan, representing 7,800 jobs under this President’s watch,” Climate Power senior adviser Jesse Lee said in a statement. “This is orders of magnitude beyond anything we’ve ever seen here. This isn’t nibbling around the edges, this is looting family budgets to put that money directly into the pockets of his (Trump) donors.”
Middle East conflict, tensions
Vance, seen as a potential Republican candidate for president in 2028, comes to Michigan less than a week after a Dearborn Heights man rammed a truck carrying fireworks and gasoline into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield on March 12, later shooting himself. A report obtained under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act by the Free Press noted that around the same time of the incident, someone phoned police requesting a welfare check on the shooter because, “he is mentally unstable due to all his family dying overseas in the war.”
Despite campaign promises not to wade into any new wars, Trump has initiated military interventions in both Venezuela and Iran less than halfway through his second four-year term.
Weeks into igniting a war alongside Israel against Iran that has dented the stock market and sent oil prices soaring, Trump noted that he and Vance stood on separate sides of the conflict with Iran, noting that the vice president was “less enthusiastic” about the United States entering another overseas conflict.
Vance had previously defended Trump’s foreign policy stance, asserting publicly that he admired the president’s restraint when it came to engaging in unnecessary military operations during his first term.
“In Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration,” Vance wrote in a Jan. 31, 2023, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about why he’d be voting for Trump in 2024. “Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed.”
Free Press staff writers Dave Boucher and Todd Spangler contributed to this report.
Jackie Charniga covers General Motors for the Free Press. Reach her at jcharniga@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: JD Vance: Republicans have more to accomplish leading up to midterms
Reporting by Jackie Charniga and Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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