Biden became the first sitting US president to join a picket line by striking with autoworkers in Michigan on Tuesday and backing their call for a 40 percent pay raise.

US President Joe Biden made history on Tuesday when he travelled to Michigan in a show of loyalty to autoworkers who are striking for higher wages and cost-of-living increases.

Wearing a United Auto Workers (UAW) union baseball cap and speaking through a bullhorn, Biden told red-shirted employees gathered in Wayne County: “You deserve what you earned, and you've earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now.”

“Wall Street didn’t build this country,” the Democratic president said. “The middle class built this country. The unions built the middle class. That’s a fact. So let’s keep going.”

Biden’s short but symbolic trip comes a day before Republican former President Donald Trump is due to arrive in Michigan, the historic heart of the US car industry and a key battleground for the 2024 presidential election campaign.

The UAW declared a strike targeting the Big Three auto manufacturers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis – on September 15, pushing the three major car companies for better pay and conditions. Never in its history had the union called a strike against all three companies at once.

Led by UAW President Shawn Fain, the union has demanded changes to pay structure, the expansion of negotiated labour contracts to planned electric vehicle factories, and the revival of benefit programs that were revoked in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.  

Biden addressed some of these concerns in Michigan. “The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before,” the president said. “You made a lot of sacrifices, you gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. Now, they’re doing incredibly well, and guess what, you should be doing incredibly well too.”

Biden added that autoworkers deserve a 40 percent increase in wages.

In the meantime, Trump, who is Biden’s expected 2024 rival, has been making his own overtures to striking workers. 

“With Biden, it doesn’t matter what hourly wages they get, in three years there will be no autoworker jobs as they will all come out of China and other countries,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “With me, there will be jobs and wages like you’ve never seen before. Our economy will grow!” 

Fain has made clear that he cares little for Trump’s attempts to court union workers. Following Trump’s announcement that he would be visiting Michigan, Fain issued a statement denouncing the plan. 

“Every fibre of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” Fain wrote. “We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding of what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class.”