It would really help if Michigan were a right-to-work state right now.
President Donald Trump said that “America is back!” to start his speech Tuesday. But as he went on, it was clear the rise of Detroit was an essential player in his vision.
Not Detroit the place, which was troubled and will be. Detroit the industry. Detroit the Motor City. The place where men work with their hands and build the vehicles that power our lives.
Detroit the industry has not had a friend like Trump in the White House in many decades. He mentioned the auto industry five times in his speech.
He and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who gave the Democrat rebuttal to the president, didn’t agree on much. But on the centrality of Michigan, and the importance of the middle class created here on Michigan’s future, they were in lockstep. You can’t Make America Great Again until you Make Detroit Build Again.
At least, I would like to think that. I used to think that.
But notice that Trump’s big jobs announcement on the auto front didn’t happen in Michigan. Trump announced that Honda would be building a new auto plant in neighboring Indiana, and it will be “one of the largest anywhere in the world.”
At that moment, all Michiganders watching had the same thought: Why not Michigan?
It was a wake-up call, an object lesson that America’s return to heavy industry does not necessarily have to come through Detroit.
Gretchen Whitmer was a lawmaker in 2012, when Republicans made Michigan a right-to-work state. What was taken on the Republican side as a policy win that would help create jobs was viewed very differently on the Left. To Democrats like Whitmer, it was the beginning of a blood feud.
Gov. Rick Snyder went into the lame duck session that year saying right-to-work was “not on my agenda.” Then his friends in the conservative movement reminded Snyder of a threat and a vow he made months earlier.
The UAW and other unions pushed a state constitutional amendment that would’ve prohibited a right-to-work law. Snyder warned against it, saying that tinkering with the constitution would be a bridge too far. The unions moved forward anyway, and lost.
When right-to-work made it to Snyder’s desk, he signed it. And Michigan began a decade of sanity, squeezed in between the Lost Decade of the Granholm era and the woes of the Whitmer era.
Whitmer was on the losing side that day, and carried the hurt with her for many years. She won the governor’s office in 2018, then did what many thought impossible in 2022, wiping out Republican control of both houses of the legislature.
As 2023 started, Big Gretch ran Lansing, and Democrats held all the gavels. They took power not with an agenda of their own, but with grievance in their hearts. They would do their damndest to repeal the Rick Snyder era, starting with right-to-work.
When reporters asked if she would sign the bill lawmakers had passed, Whitmer said it was not on her agenda, and you can tell it felt good to say so. Perhaps thinking that Democrats would continue to run Michigan, and America, Whitmer signed the right-to-work repeal. The era of worker freedom was over, and the bad old days, when workers at Ford, GM, and Stellantis would be forced to join the UAW to get and keep their jobs, would return.
But now, sanity has returned to the White House. Make Detroit Build Again is closer to reality than it has been in 30 years. And any growth of the auto industry in Michigan will have to involve the UAW and its president, Shawn Fain.
Walter Reuther, the UAW’s leader during Michigan’s golden-era growth, is not walking through that door. The era of reasonable union leaders who were a partner in prosperity is over.
Fain regularly wears shirts that say “Eat The Rich,” and talks openly of his want for a national labor strike, timed to begin on May 1, 2028. It’s no shock that Honda would avoid such a man. And that’s why Indiana got the opportunity Michigan should have, with one of the most successful automakers on Earth.
Hurt people hurt people. Gretchen Whitmer’s hurt feelings at the initial passage of right-to-work led to a repeal effort a decade later.
And two years later, Michigan is overrun by Chinese battery plants seeking corporate welfare, and it’s ignored by one of the biggest and best automakers on Earth.
Donald Trump wants Detroit to build again. Gretchen Whitmer says automakers need to talk to Shawn Fain first. See the problem?
Michigan Republicans have a ready-made winning issue in 2026, if they choose to capitalize: Make Workers Free Again.
Every time an auto plant opens in Indiana or Ohio rather than Michigan, it’s a missed opportunity. You can thank Big Gretch for that.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
