DETROIT — President Donald Trump contended his policies had already spurred what he described as a "Trump economic boom" during a speech Tuesday in Michigan's largest city, as concerns about rising prices and tariffs loom over the midterm election year.

Trump's address before the Detroit Economic Club featured him claiming that affordability was "a fake word" used by Democrats and targeting Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Trump called Powell "a jerk" and "a real stiff" who "will be gone soon." The president has been at odds with Powell over interest rates.

The president blamed Democrats for causing high prices, said the costs of groceries were starting to go down "rapidly," and argued that over the first year of his second term, his administration had already achieved "almost no inflation" and "super high growth."

“The results are in, and the Trump economic boom is officially begun," Trump said during the 64-minute-long speech at MotorCity Casino Hotel.

The declaration in Detroit came after a Jan. 2-6 poll of 600 likely Michigan voters, commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV, found that 32% of participants — about one in every three — identified inflation, the cost of living, jobs or the economy as the most important issue in the coming midterm election.

Further, 64% of the participants said costs had gone up over the last year. Only 13% said costs had gone down, while 22% said costs had stayed about the same. The telephone survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Less than two hours before Trump took the stage inside MotorCity Casino's Sound Board theater, the economic club held a panel discussion on Michigan's economic outlook. During it, Mary Buchzeiger, CEO of the auto supplier Lucerne International, told the crowd that tariffs on products made outside the U.S. are taxes.

In the short term, they will drive investment in U.S. manufacturing, Buchzeiger acknowledged.

"In the long term, it is going to drive up the cost of vehicles, and it is going to make us uncompetitive with the rest of the world," she said.

'They rigged the election'

After Air Force One landed at Detroit Metro Airport at about 11:45 a.m., Trump toured Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn Truck Plant ahead of his 2 p.m. speech before an estimated 500 people at a Detroit Economic Club meeting.

It was the third time the Republican president has addressed the organization of Michigan business leaders.

Trump toured Ford's truck plant, also known as the River Rouge complex, alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr., CEO Jim Farley and the plant's manager, Corey Williams.

The Republican Party's likely U.S. Senate nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake Township, was in the crowd for Trump's speech and used a social media post to welcome the president to Michigan.

"Safer streets. Secure borders. Reshoring jobs. More money in our pockets," Rogers wrote. "And this is only the beginning."

During his speech in Michigan, Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that fraud somehow influenced his loss in the state's 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden and Rogers' loss in the 2024 U.S. Senate race to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Holly Democrat.

“I think they took that away from you," Trump told Rogers. "They rigged the election on you.”

Rogers lost the 2024 race to Slotkin by 19,006 votes, 48.3% to 48.6% in 2024 and quickly conceded the race.

This year, Michigan is poised to again play a key role in the November midterm election. Voters in the state will elect a new governor, a new attorney general, a new secretary of state and a new U.S. senator in less than 300 days. Current U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, a Bloomfield Township Democrat, decided not to seek reelection.

The state is also home to two swing U.S. House districts that Republicans won in 2024 but will have to fight to keep this fall, as they try to hold on to their House and Senate majorities.

Banking on a 'trickle-down effect'

Meanwhile, Democrats in Michigan have been criticizing Trump's handling of prices and his strategy of instituting tariffs on products made outside the United States.

On Tuesday, Katie Smith, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans in key races in Michigan will own Trump's "expensive and chaotic agenda."

"Donald Trump’s visit to Detroit is the latest reminder of what every Michigan Republican will be forced to answer for: reckless tariffs raising costs and killing Michigan jobs, devastating Medicaid cuts ripping away health care from nearly 260,000 Michiganders and everything from groceries to health care getting more expensive," Smith said.

But Meshawn Maddock, former co-chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, defended Trump's economic policies, saying she thinks the prosperity that will come will undercut Democrats' campaign messaging that "life sucks."

"The trickle-down effect of everything Trump is doing is going to just help everybody," Maddock said.

Maddock said she was recently in Florida, and the state was packed with tourists and people spending money.

"I think we're going to Florida Michigan," Maddock said.

'Rapidly down'

Trump promoted his administration's handling of the removal of Venezuela's former President Nicolás Maduro as "flawless" and told the crowd in Detroit that he would offer more plans on the subject of affordability in the near future.

He highlighted one initiative to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

"Meanwhile, grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down, rent is down, airfares are down, hotel rates are down, cellphone prices are down, and we’re just getting started," Trump said at one point Tuesday. "But more importantly than going down, our growth is through the roof.”

Trump won Michigan's 2024 presidential election over Democrat Kamala Harris, 50% to 48%. During the campaign, he repeatedly vowed to combat inflation as president.

"Starting on day one of my new administration, we will end inflation and we will make America affordable again," Trump said during an October 2024 rally in Saginaw County.

Consumer prices rose 0.3% in December from the prior month, the Labor Department announced Tuesday, the same as in November.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump also said the car industry would "have a renaissance the likes of which we have never seen before" If he was elected.

In October 2024, Trump said, during another speech before the Detroit Economic Club, he would create a "Michigan miracle" and the "stunning rebirth" of the Motor City.

Over the first 11 months of his second term, the number of manufacturing jobs in Michigan slightly increased by 0.4% from 594,500 positions in January to about 596,800 in November 2025, according to tracking by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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(Detroit News staff writer Summer Ballentine contributed to this story.)

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