Harris touts Michigan manufacturing plan while Trump leads on economy

Vice President Kamala Harris put manufacturing at the center of her final speech against former President Donald Trump in the battleground state of Michigan on Monday.

“When he was president, he sold advanced chips to China that helped them with their agenda to modernize their military,” Harris said of her Republican opponent during a speech at the Hemlock Semiconductor manufacturing center in Saginaw County.

“This is not about what is in the best interest of America's security and prosperity, which should be two of the highest priorities for a president in the United States,” she added.

With just over a week to go before the Nov. 5 election, Harris' visit, focused on manufacturing, was one of her last opportunities to narrow Trump's lead in the polls on the economy in a state that has become an epicenter of emerging U.S. Industries such as semiconductors and electric vehicles have become .

Before her remarks, the Democratic presidential candidate toured the facility of Hemlock Semiconductor, which recently received a $325 million investment from the Biden administration's CHIPS and Science Act.

“Billions of dollars are being invested in exactly the type of work that is happening here,” Harris said, referring to the CHIPS Act, which Trump has criticized. “We created tax credits to incentivize the private sector to do this work.”

CNBC's October All-America Economic Survey found that 46% of respondents nationwide said Trump would be better for the economy in their community, while 38% said the same about Harris. This difference is outside the survey's margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Particularly in battleground states, the poll found Trump had a comparable lead of 8 points, even outside the 4.0 percentage point margin of error.

The Michigan tour is part of the Harris campaign's week-long barnstorming of battleground states. The vice president was in Pennsylvania on Sunday and is scheduled to visit North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada on Wednesday and Thursday.

Following her speech at Hemlock Semiconductor, Harris will tour a union training facility. She then travels to Ann Arbor for a rally with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Harris and Trump each promised a manufacturing boom under their hypothetical administrations, but had different ideas about how to achieve it.

Trump has promised to repeal the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act and has attacked the CHIPS Act. The Republican presidential candidate has launched a universal tariff policy on all imports as his main strategy for onshore manufacturing.

“This chip deal is so bad,” Trump said in a Friday interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “You just had to charge them customs duties.”

Harris has criticized this harsh tariff approach, branding it a “Trump sales tax” because economists estimate a flat import tax would raise consumer prices.

Harris, for her part, wants to boost manufacturing through a combination of tax credits and government subsidies for sectors such as artificial intelligence, clean energy manufacturing, cars and semiconductors.