(DETROIT) - President Donald Trump offered a full-throated defense of his sweeping tariffs on Tuesday while visiting Michigan.
Trump visited the factory floor of a Ford plant in Dearborn, where he viewed F-150's, the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S., at various stages of production. That included seeing how gas and hybrid models were built, as well as the all-gas Raptor model, designed for off-road use.
The President chatted with assembly line workers as well as the automaker's executive chairman, Bill Ford, a descendent of Henry Ford.
He later gave a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that was meant to be focused on his economic policies but veered heavily to other topics as well. Those included falsely claiming to have won Michigan three times and recalling the snakes that felled workers during U.S. efforts to build the Panama Canal more than a century ago.
While speaking at the MotorCity Casino the President said the results are in, and the Trump economic boom has officially begun." He argued that "one of the biggest reasons for this unbelievable success has been our historic use of tariffs."