How do you vote when you make cars you can’t afford? In Detroit, the battle between Trump and Biden for the white working-class vote will be tough. “Buying a new car will cost half my annual salary,” says Curtis Cranford, AFP reports.

The 66-year-old worker had just shaken hands with the US president, who briefly joined a picket Tuesday outside the General Motors plant in Belleville, a suburb of Detroit.

He thanked Joe Biden for coming, but because of the energy transition that will “cost jobs” and especially the Democrats’ positions on abortion and immigration, he will “probably vote Republican” next year.

And, therefore, potentially for Donald Trump, the main favorite in the primary elections of the conservative party.

For his part, Donald Trump on Thursday visited a small auto plant near Detroit whose workers are not members of the UAW, a major auto union.

The UAW announced a historic strike against three major American manufacturers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are fighting to “attract the working-class electorate, especially white voters,” who will be crucial next year, Vanderbilt University professor Jefferson Cowie analyzed in an interview with NPR radio.

“Will they be tempted by Trump’s usual rhetoric, especially on race and nationalism? Or will we witness an evolution more towards (…) a somewhat Rooseveltian vision of Biden, this is really the central question,” he summarizes.

Trump’s threat

Joe Biden, who relies heavily on union support and promotes his grand plans for middle-class growth at every opportunity, became the first US president ever to picket.

Grabbing a megaphone to encourage the strikers, the 80-year-old Democrat was looking to make an impact on his campaign.

Carolyn Nippa, 51, 26 of whom have worked for GM, still can’t believe she greeted him: “It was surreal.”

“I’m not for Trump. I’ll say it directly. I think he worked for multinational corporations and billionaires,” says this worker, who changed factories several times when factories closed.

“If I don’t win the election, the auto workers are done for,” the former president said on his Truth Social network.

So, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, who is the champion of workers?

“It’s hard to say,” said Christy Zomecki, 44, who also works at that General Motors parts plant, like her father and uncle before her.

“This strike is not really a political issue,” she assures us.

Her concerns are the same as those of all the strikers I have met: life is too expensive, wages are not keeping up, despite the sacrifices made in 2009 to save multinational companies.

At this time, during a great economic and financial crisis, Sarah Polk asked herself: “But who really supports us?

The 53-year-old graphic designer I met in downtown Detroit doesn’t work in the auto business, but as an employee of Blue Cross Insurance, she’s still a member of the UAW and therefore on strike.

Biden’s visit, like Trump’s, is a “publicity stunt,” says the single mother of three, who is “always a month late” on her bills.

As a voter, she “tended to be a Democrat.” She would have voted for Robert F. Kennedy or Marianne Williamson, two candidates who have little or no chance of appearing on the ballot next November.

So who will get her vote in 2024?” “I do not know”.