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Hillary Clinton Attacks Donald Trump in Michigan Speech In Michigan, Hillary Clinton Calls Donald Trump Enemy of ‘the Little Guy’
(about 1 hour later)
WARREN, Mich. — In her first full-throttled rejection of Donald J. Trump’s economic agenda, Hillary Clinton sharply criticized her opponent for advancing policies that she said would lift the ultra wealthy and cast middle-class and working Americans further into financial distress. WARREN, Mich. — In a full-throttled rejection of Donald J. Trump’s economic policies, Hillary Clinton on Thursday accused him of feigning a connection to the working man, while advocating policies that would “work for him and his friends, at the expense of everyone else.”
Presenting a contrast between two starkly different economic visions during a major economic speech in Detroit, Mrs. Clinton called parts of Mr. Trump’s tax plan a discount to benefit his ultra-wealthy peers and relatives. Faulting Mr. Trump for promising deep tax cuts for the wealthy and a gentler approach to financial regulation, she portrayed his proposals as reflective of traditional Republican thinking that would exacerbate the gap between rich and poor. Seeking to chip away at the perception among working-class white voters that Mr. Trump is the economic populist in the race, Mrs. Clinton said the Republican nominee merely paid “lip service” to being on the side of average Americans. She repeatedly contrasted his personal wealth with her own middle-class upbringing.
“Donald Trump wants to give trillions in tax cuts to people like himself,” she said, citing his positions on eliminating the estate tax and reducing corporate taxes. “There’s a myth out there that he’ll stick it to the rich and powerful because, at heart, he’s really on the side of the little guy,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Don’t believe it.”
“Even conservative experts say Trump’s agenda will pull our economy into recession,” she said, adding that he “made a career out of stiffing small businesses.” She also faulted Mr. Trump for making his products overseas, saying it’s “just wrong.” Mrs. Clinton referred to the tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations that Mr. Trump presented in a speech in Detroit on Monday, saying he “wants to give trillions in tax breaks to people like himself,” which would lead to broad cuts in spending on education, health care and environmental protection.
For all of Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to tar Mr. Trump, he remains a difficult opponent to critique in traditional terms. Although some of his policies, which he presented in Detroit on Monday in his most expansive economic speech, align with those of Congressional Republicans, others, like his promise to rip up global trade agreements, break with Republican orthodoxy. Although she has attacked Mr. Trump’s business record for months, her address on Thursday presented the first opportunity for Mrs. Clinton to deliver a detailed point-by-point rebuttal to the economic proposals Mr. Trump unveiled this week.
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, has had to work to convince voters in Michigan and other Rust Belt states that she no longer supports trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which her husband signed into law, and the Trans Pacific Partnership, which she supported as secretary of state. She called for making the biggest infrastructure investment — $275 billion — since World War II, and urged aggressive spending on green energy to counter China and Germany. And she repeated her plans to make public colleges and universities tuition free for in-state middle-class families.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who criticized Mrs. Clinton for her previous positions on Nafta and TPP, defeated her unexpectedly, and by a slim margin, in Michigan’s Democratic primary. And she sharply criticized key elements of Mr. Trump’s tax cut plans, particularly the elimination of the estate tax and his plan to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, calling it the “Trump Loophole” and saying the plan would “allow him to pay less than half the current tax rate on income from many of his own companies.”
Over the last few weeks, Mrs. Clinton and her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, have been laser-focused on talking about her plans to create jobs and lift wages. And the efforts appear to be working. She characterized her opponent’s economic doctrine as “an even more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics” mixed with his own “outlandish Trumpian ideas that even many Republicans reject.”
Until last week, Mr. Trump had led Mrs. Clinton in polls on the question of whom voters thought would best handle the economy. That changed last week when a CNN survey showed for the first time that Mrs. Clinton led Mr. Trump, 50 to 48 percent, on the issue of who voters trust most on handling the economy. And she rejected Mr. Trump’s promises to ease financial regulation and do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he calls detrimental to average Americans.
She has spent the past 18 months explaining her main economic proposals, including investing $275 billion on the biggest infrastructure plan since World War II, making public colleges and universities tuition free for in-state middle-class families, rewriting the corporate tax code to penalize companies that move jobs overseas and giving tax incentives to companies that share profits with employees. “Even conservative experts say Trump’s agenda will pull our economy back into recession,” and cause the loss of 3.4 million jobs, Mrs. Clinton said, pointing to an analysis for Moody’s Analytics led by Mark Zandi, who advised Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.
But now that Mr. Trump has presented his proposals, she can more specifically rebuke his plans, aides said. On Tuesday in Florida, she took aim at his proposal to end what Republicans call the “death tax” — the taxation of inheritances that exceed $5.5 million per person. Mrs. Clinton’s remarks often transcended policy, as she sought to portray Mr. Trump as an out-of-touch businessman who would squash the working class. She talked about her grandfather’s years of labor in a lace mill in Scranton, Pa., and her father’s small drapery business in Chicago.
“My eyebrows went up when he said he wanted to abolish the death tax,” she said, “Which would be about a $4 billion gift to him and his family.” “This is personal for me,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I am the product of the American middle class.”
She has labeled Mr. Trump’s proposal to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent the “Trump Loophole,” which the Clinton campaign described as “a backdoor tax” that lets Mr. Trump and businessmen like him to pay less than half the current tax rate on their income. But for all of her efforts, Mr. Trump remains a difficult opponent to critique in traditional ideological terms. Although some of his policies align with those of congressional Republicans, others, like his promise to rip up global trade agreements, break with Republican orthodoxy.
Before her remarks, Mrs. Clinton toured the Futuramic Tool and Engineering factory, where she reiterated her support for strengthening labor unions and manufacturing products in the United States. Lately, Mrs. Clinton has hammered Mr. Trump for making his Trump-branded products overseas. And unlike Mitt Romney, who President Obama effectively portrayed as a cold corporate titan in the 2012 race, Mr. Trump enjoys some of his strongest support among working-class white voters who believe he cares about people like them.
“This is one of the big differences that I have with Donald Trump,” she said while visiting a T-shirt shop in Des Moines on Wednesday, mentioning his Trump ties, suits and furniture. “He doesn’t make any of them in the United States.” The issue of trade particularly hurt Mrs. Clinton in the primary in Michigan, which is heavily reliant on manufacturing jobs. She narrowly lost the state to Senator Bernie Sanders, who, like Mr. Trump, sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton for her previous support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, of Nafta, which her husband signed into law, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she supported as secretary of state.
Before Mrs. Clinton’s speech, Mr. Trump used an address to the National Association of Home Builders in Florida to assail former President Bill Clinton for signing Nafta into law, which Mr. Trump said devastated upstate New York, and he hammered Mrs. Clinton for failing to deliver on a promise she made in her 2000 Senate campaign to bring 200,000 jobs to the state.
“She passed no legislation that helped,” he said. “She couldn’t get out of her own way.”
Mr. Clinton gave her address after touring the Futuramic Tool & Engineering factory in Warren, which made automotive parts in the past but has diversified to supply parts to the aerospace industry. Praising the company for being at the front line of a potential “manufacturing renaissance,” Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Trump for taking a dark view of America’s potential.
“When Donald Trump visited Detroit on Monday, he talked only of failure, poverty and crime,” she said. “He’s missing so much.”
Mrs. Clinton has spent the past 18 months explaining her main economic proposals and did not propose anything new on Thursday. But she did contrast her specific promises with those Mr. Trump offered on Monday.
She mocked Mr. Trump’s plan to give tax breaks for child care — the brainchild of his daughter Ivanka and intended to appeal to middle-class mothers — as a boon to rich families with nannies. And, in contrast to Mr. Trump’s corporate tax reductions, she said she would impose an “exit tax” to penalize companies that move jobs overseas and offer tax incentives to companies that share profits with employees.
“Then there’s the estate tax, which Trump wants to eliminate altogether,” she said. “If you believe that he’s as wealthy as he says, that alone would save the Trump family $4 billion.”
But on one issue that has resonated with working-class voters, Mrs. Clinton played defense on Thursday.
Halfway through the speech, she paused. The crowd grew quiet. “I’m sure some of you are thinking, that all sounds good, but what about trade?” she said. “After all, Trump talks about it all the time.”
While reiterating her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she belittled Mr. Trump’s tough talk on trade as empty, noting how he makes Trump-branded products overseas. “Before he tweets about how he’s really one who’ll put ‘America First’ in trade, let’s remember where Trump makes many of his own products,” she said. “Because it’s sure not America.”
Outside the factory setting, a scattering of pro-Trump protesters held “Hillary for Prison” signs and criticized Mrs. Clinton’s connections to Wall Street. And more than 1,000 miles away in Florida, Mr. Trump echoed that critique.
“She doesn’t have the talent” to jump-start the economy, Mr. Trump said. “If she wanted to do it, she couldn’t because her donors won’t let her.”
Wielding a chart, Mr. Trump said the Obama administration’s policies that Mrs. Clinton wants to continue have led to plummeting homeownership rates and anemic economic growth. He also suggested that Mrs. Clinton wanted to raise taxes by $1.3 trillion and place more of that burden on the middle class — something that she has not proposed.
“Many workers are earning less money in real dollars than they were in 1970,” Mr. Trump said. “And then you wonder why they’re angry.”
In her speech, Mrs. Clinton tried to address voters’ anger over income inequality, but she also tried to frame her plans as the optimistic flip side of Mr. Trump’s pessimistic assessment of the country’s economic prospects, pointing to two Olympic gold medalists.
“If Team U.S.A. was as fearful as Trump,” she said, “Michael Phelps and Simone Biles would be cowering in the locker room.”