VP JD Vance visits Bay City factory: 'We've started a great American comeback'

FOX 2 - For the first time since last November's election season, Michigan received an official visit with the vice president Friday.

VP JD Vance took a tour of Vantage Plastics with Kelly Loeffler, the head of the small business administration and made remarks to a large crowd at the facility. Vance said he was happy to be out of the Washington DC bubble to visit with American workers.

"Don't hold it against me, I'm from that state, (located) one state south," he quipped. "We know in the industrial Midwest that companies like Vantage make Great Lakes states the powerhouse of American industry and that makes it the powerhouse of world industry."

Vance spoke of the state of the economy the Trump Administration inherited with inflation and the cost of homes nearly doubling.

"Now, I have to be honest with you, the road ahead of us is long, but we are already in just seven short weeks, starting to see early indications of the president's vision becoming our shared American reality," he said. "This February, the president's first full month in office, America gained 10,000 American manufacturing jobs."

Located in Standish, Michigan, the company specializes in making materials for automotive, agriculture, medical, packaging and consumer goods, according to its website.

"America's success depends on the success of companies like Vantage Plastics," he said. "I don't mean that in some abstract poetic-sounding sense, but literally, if we do not protect our nation's manufacturers, we lose a fundamental part of who we are as a people. Making things, building things, working with our hands is America's heritage, which is alive and well in this facility."

Vance, a Rust Belt native, spoke of his roots growing up in Middletown, Ohio where several factories closed, impacting the town and region.

Between the decade of the 1990s to 2016, Vance repeated a Trump campaign statistic that the US lost five million manufacturing jobs.

"I don't have to tell anyone here today, when we lose the ability to make our own stuff, we abandon a way of life, one that has sustained towns like Bay City and countless other communities, from Middletown, Ohio, to a ton of communities all across the Midwest." he said.

Vance said the emphasis is on keeping things made in America, and returning manufacturing to the states.

"If you invest in America, in American jobs, in American workers, and in American businesses, you're going to be rewarded," he said. "We're going to cut your taxes. We're going to slash regulation, and we're going to reduce the cost of energy to build things right here in this country that all of us love.

"But if you try to undercut us and build outside of our borders, President Trump's administration has got nothing for you. If you want to be rewarded, build in America. If you want to be penalized, build outside of America. It's as simple as that."

Vice President JD Vance at the Vantage Plastics factory in Standish, Michigan.