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| President Donald Trump exits Air Force One as he arrives at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) |
CLEVELAND — President Donald Trump billed his trip to Ohio Thursday as a chance to push economic recovery, but he quickly pivoted to a deeply personal attack on Joe Biden, even questioning without foundation the previous vice president’s faith in God.
Even for a president known for his blunt criticism, Trump’s remarks stood out and that they signaled how contentious the campaign may pass through the approaching months.
“He’s following the unconventional left agenda, remove your guns, destroy your 2nd Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns. He’s against energy, our kind of energy. I don’t think he’s aiming to do too well in Ohio,” Trump said.
Biden called the remarks beneath the office he holds. “For President Trump to attack my faith is shameful,” Biden said.
Trump also used his trip to Ohio to speak trade, telling workers at a Whirlpool plant, “I will rise up to the foreign trade cheaters and violators that hate our country.”
Barely one month after a new North American trade agreement went into effect, Trump announced his intention to reimpose 10% tariffs on aluminum imported from Canada, saying that US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has advised him the step was necessary to defend the U.S. aluminum industry. However, the move also sets up the chance of retaliation against U.S. companies and producers.
“Canada was taking advantage of us as usual,” Trump said.
The administration said the president had exempted Canada last year from tariffs he had imposed as long as imports of steel and aluminum from Canada remained at historical levels. But there has been a surge that has intensified in recent months despite a contraction in U.S. demand.
Trump also sought to remind voters of the economic prosperity that much of the state enjoyed before the coronavirus pandemic and said that he is best suited to rebuild a crippled economy. But his handling of the outbreak has weakened his bid for a second term, causing Trump to spend time and resources in a very state he won easily in 2016 but now may be at risk of slipping away.
The virus already altered the trip even before Trump landed, with word that GOP Gov. Mike DeWine had tested positive for the coronavirus. DeWine had planned to meet with Trump and join the president on a visit to the Whirlpool Corp. plant in northwest Ohio. DeWine’s office said the 73-year-old governor had no symptoms and was returning to Columbus; later, it said a second COVID-19 test on the governor turned up negative.
Shortly after landing in Ohio, Trump addressed supporters awaiting him. It was at that event where he veered from his economic message and attacked Biden personally.
Biden’s campaign issued a press release from the previous vice president during which he said his faith has been the bedrock foundation of his life and provided him comfort in moments of loss and tragedy.
“Like the words of so many other insecure bullies, President Trump’s comments reveal more about him than they are doing about anyone else,” Biden said. “They show us a person willing to stoop to any low for political gain, and someone whose actions are completely at odds with the values and teachings that he professes to believe in.”
For Trump, the Ohio trip launched an extended weekend of fundraising that comes as Biden has chipped away at Trump’s financial advantage with the race entering its final three months.
The virus upended Trump’s commitment to run on the back of a robust economy, and Biden has charged that the president has pushed to reopen states early on in hopes of jump-starting the markets and lifting his standing in the polls. But several states have had to curtail the pace of their reopening, and officials are warily watching an increase in coronavirus cases in the Midwest, including Ohio.
When Trump swept through the region in 2016, his economic populism argument was one amongst the factors that led him to narrowly capture Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He handily won Ohio, which had been a swing state for many years, by eight percentage points.
He promised a producing renaissance, but that has did not materialize. Manufacturers added jobs during the first two years of his presidency, but the gains effectively stalled in 2019 as industrial Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio began to shed factory workers.
The import taxes charged by his administration hampered manufacturing companies’ supply lines and created uncertainty. The economy had roughly 12.85 million factory jobs at the beginning of the election year, compared with the 14 million before the 2008 financial crisis, in keeping with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The pandemic only compounded the pain. Manufacturers cut 1.36 million jobs between February and April because the economy went on lockdown. Hiring in May and June has pointed to a small recovery. But though factories add 267,500 jobs expected in the July employment report being released Friday, the sector would still have 500,000 fewer jobs than it did before the outbreak.
Trump now finds himself severely tested in battleground states, and campaign aides have privately almost written off Michigan. The president now has been forced to spend time in states that his campaign once thought he had locked up. The Ohio trip comes a few days after he visited once deeply Republican Texas.
“We’re aiming to win Ohio by even more this time,” Trump claimed.
In Ohio, Trump signed an executive order requiring that the federal purchase certain drugs from U.S. manufacturers rather than from foreign companies. The order would instruct the govt to develop a list of “essential” medicines and then buy them and other medical supplies solely from U.S. manufacturers.
The administration has long looked to reduce U.S. dependency on drugs made overseas, particularly in China. The new order invokes the Defense Production Act to procure essential medicines and other equipment from America but doesn't stipulate precisely which drugs would make up the requirements.
Trump has said he wants to get ready for future pandemics by replenishing the national stockpile and bringing manufacturing of critical supplies and equipment back to the U.S. His critics have suggested that his administration was woefully unprepared for coronavirus, which has killed over 157,000 Americans, which Trump has faltered in mobilizing the nation’s resources to battle the virus.
After his trip to Ohio, Trump plans a long weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with a high-dollar fundraiser in the Hamptons on New York’s Long Island and a second near the Jersey shore.
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