Michigan 'thriving' under Trump policies: Navarro
A Biden administration wouldn't be a 'pretty picture in the Wolverine State,' said Navarro
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro warned on Monday that a Biden administration would not be a “pretty picture” for Michigan.
Navarro noted on “Mornings with Maria” that the key battleground state is “thriving under Trump policies.”
“Basically if we went and got rid of fracking, got rid of tariffs, cut the defense budget, I mean it would just not be a pretty picture in the Wolverine State,” he told host Maria Bartiromo.
Navarro, who is putting together a report on the swing state economies ahead of the 2020 election, stressed that there is a stark contrast between the policies of President Trump and Joe Biden and said Michigan is “really an interesting study” displaying that contrast.
“You start with the Antrim Shale formation, which is in the northern part of the lower peninsula, there’s 9,000 wells there, they employ over 50,000 people directly or indirectly that’s something that is thriving under President Trump, which would get shut down under Joe Biden,” Navarro told Bartiromo.
He then pointed to the tariff policy.
“Traverse City is the cherry capital of the world,” he said. “We actually put tariffs on Turkey of over 500% because Turkey was dumping cherries into the market.”
“If you go to the southeast corner of the state, Benton Harbor, Whirlpool has 4,000 employees there at its corporate headquarters and we were able to put tariffs on washing machines and now that company is booming, not just in Michigan, but across the Midwest particularly in the pride of Ohio, in Clyde,” he continued.
He also talked about defense spending saying that the Obama-Biden administration, “cut the defense budget by 16%.”
He then pointed to the General Dynamics Land Systems plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., where military vehicles and weapon systems are manufactured and said it’s “booming.”
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“And then of course we had Joe Biden voting for NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement],” Navarro said. “We had President Trump renegotiating that and getting the USMCA [U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement].”
“Guess what? That’s the full employment act for autoworkers in Detroit because what that USMCA does is it lifts the content that is required in North America and then we stick really strong labor environmental provisions on Mexico so the jobs gravitate to Detroit,” he continued.
During an interview Biden did with CNN’s Jake Tapper last month, Tapper asked Biden which was better: NAFTA or Trump’s revamp of the previous agreement. The former vice president conceded that the USMCA is "better than NAFTA."
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While campaigning in Michigan in September, President Trump basked in the glory of his opponent essentially handing him a win on CNN by admitting that NAFTA was “a mistake.”
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A RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Biden with a 6.8 percentage point lead in Michigan.
Fox News’ Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.