Vice President Mike Pence to visit Michigan Thursday, tour manufacturing businesses – MLive.com

Vice President Mike Pence plans to visit several Michigan businesses Thursday and deliver remarks at a steel manufacturer in Sterling Heights.

The White House announced Pences travel plans include lunch at Engine House, a bar and grill owned by two Detroit firefighters, followed by a tour of Chardam Gear Company. Pence is also scheduled to visit Casadei Structural Steel Inc. and deliver remarks before returning to Washington D.C.

America First Policies, a nonprofit group created to promote the policy agenda of President Donald Trumps re-election campaign, later announced Pence will participate in a noon roundtable at Casadei Structural Steel. A press release states the event is focused on policies driving economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic and is part of the groups Great American Comeback Tour.

Pence spoke at a similar event held by America First Policies on June 12 in Pennsylvania.

Additional details about the vice presidents trip, including whether the stops will be open to the public, have not been released as of Monday. Pences visit to Michigan is organized by the White House instead of the presidents campaign, though Sterling Heights and the surrounding Macomb County are important battlegrounds for Trump in 2020.

Trumps re-election campaign has kept a tight focus on suburban communities north of Detroit. Pence held a rally in Troy during his last visit to Michigan in February.

Trump visited Sterling Heights in the final days of the 2016 presidential election. He later won the city by a 12 percentage point margin and flipped Macomb County, which had previously voted for Democrats in the previous two elections.

The presidents support in Macomb County helped him win Michigan by 10,704 votes, his closest margin of victory in any state and the closest result in Michigan electoral history.

Chardam Gear Co. is an aerospace components company that manufactures parts for military and commercial aircraft. The company has also worked on projects in the space industry, according to its website, including the Hubble Telescope.

Casadei Structural Steel operates an 88,000-square-foot fabrication facility, where workers manufacture materials for stairs, railways and platforms.

Thursdays events are the first time Pence has stopped in Michigan since positive cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. The schedule is similar to his last visit in February, when Pence traveled to the Michigan Farm Bureau Lansing Legislative Seminar, dropped in at a local restaurant in Lansing, then held a Keep America Great rally in Troy.

The former Indiana governor previously visited Saginaw, Holland and Portage in December 2019, and also spoke at the Michigan Republican Partys biennial leadership conference on Mackinac Island last summer.

Trump came to Michigan last month to tour Ford Motor Companys Rawsonville manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti Township. The presidents visit was an official White House event, but Michigan Democrats have since criticized Trump administration officials for allegedly using the program to promote the candidacy of U.S. Senate hopeful John James.

Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said Pences visit is an attempt to spin Trumps failed record in a statement, blaming the president for the heavy toll the coronavirus inflicted on Michigans economy and residents in the Detroit area.

No amount of pandering and empty words can undo the damage done by Donald Trumps failures and Michigan voters will hold him accountable in November, Barnes said.

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Vice President Mike Pence to visit Michigan Thursday, tour manufacturing businesses - MLive.com