Trump visited the factory floor of a Ford plant in Dearborn, where he viewed F-150s — the bestselling domestic vehicle in the U.S. — at various stages of production. That included seeing how gas and hybrid models were built, as well as the all-gas Raptor model, designed for off-road use.

The president chatted with assembly line workers as well as the automaker’s executive chairman, Bill Ford, a descendent of Henry Ford. “All U.S. automakers are doing great,” Trump said.

He later gave a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that was meant to be focused on his economic policies but veered heavily to other topics as well. Those included falsely claiming to have won Michigan three times (he lost the state in 2020 to Joe Biden) and recalling the snakes that felled workers during U.S. efforts to build the Panama Canal more than a century ago.

“The results are in, and the Trump economic boom has officially begun,” the president said at the MotorCity Casino. He argued that “one of the biggest reasons for this unbelievable success has been our historic use of tariffs.”

Trump said that tariffs were “overwhelmingly” paid by “foreign nations and middlemen” — even as economists say steep import taxes are simply passed from overseas manufactures to U.S. consumers, helping exacerbate fears about the rising cost of living.