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Hey, it's daily drive executive producer Jake Nier in Detroit.
On today's bonus episode of the show, the second and final part of our own Mollie
Boygon's interview with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMarro.
It's part of our ongoing series of interviews with candidates running for
Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat in 2026.
It's a key race when it comes to control in Congress and the future of policy
that directly affects the auto industry.
We brought you the first part of this conversation on Wednesday's show.
If you missed it, make sure to go back and check that out.
In this part of the interview, Senator McMarro talks about her ideas for
effective tariff policy and how lawmakers on all levels can help create
better conditions for homegrown manufacturing and talent.
If what you say is true that the sort of effort to undermine
research and development and research funding for universities
is detrimental to the future of the auto industry, is there anything that
states can do to sort of fight that effort?
Yes, absolutely.
So I am currently the chair of the State Senate Economic and Community
Development Committee and the bulk of my work for truly the last seven years
from Minority Vice Chair to currently the chair of the committee has been
pushing for legislation and research to reform our state's approach to economic development
so that we rely less heavily on major tax breaks and incentives for large-scale
manufacturing projects and invest more in communities and small businesses
and innovators and entrepreneurs.
I have a package of bills that I introduced with State Senator John
DeMousse who is a conservative Republican from Northern Michigan that would compel
the state to create a 10-year comprehensive economic development strategy that considers
how do we get to the goal of growing our population, growing our median income,
considering outcomes like access to housing and transportation,
but in a way that is more regionalized because what I've heard,
we hosted roundtable discussions all across the state and there is growing
frustration, especially outside of Southeast Michigan,
that Michiganders feel like we have put all of our eggs in a single basket
and we've just seen what happens.
We lost out on a Sandisk manufacturing facility in in Mundy Township
which the state was really hoping and the company was hoping would be a Chips Act award.
But then the November 2024 election happened, Donald Trump became president
in his first State of the Union address.
He ripped the Chips Act and said that it was a terrible piece of legislation
and the company pulled out citing economic uncertainty.
So what I've heard loud and clear from people across the state is
we can no longer afford to put all of our eggs in one basket
and hope for these large-scale manufacturing facilities
to kind of come and save our economy
when instead we should be focused on how do we invest in what's next?
Somebody who came before my committee and I think about this all the time
was Doug Song who was the founder of Duo Security,
became the first unicorn in Michigan they sold to Google
and he said what he's observed is that Michigan is really good at understanding what we've done.
We have a hard time imagining what we're going to do next.
So who's the next Ford?
Who's the next GM?
Who's the next Rivian?
I mean something that haunts me to this day is in 2021 when Ford
made their announcement on Blue Oval for Tennessee and Kentucky,
that was like an earthquake went off in Lansing.
In that same year Rivian announced that they were going to relocate
all of their design and engineering to Southern California
and it was like nobody even noticed.
And that to me like when you are relocating design and engineering
that is you know the brain center of a new company
and they were willing to pay a premium to move to Southern California
because that's where the talent was.
So yes states can do a lot more.
I'm leading on legislation to do just that so that we plant more seeds
and figure out who's going to be the next big innovator in this industry
and grow them from scratch here in Michigan
because that's what we did to be successful in the first place.
Turning the page for a moment to a slightly different topic.
You've criticized President Trump's tariff strategy as chaotic.
What does effective tariff policy look like?
So you have to do it with your allies.
I mean first of all the fact that we've effectively started a trade war
with Canada. I was at a protest down in Detroit
where there was a joint protest between the Canadian side of the border
and the Michigan side of the border.
And people holding signs up saying you know we love you Canada
and we're your partners.
I haven't talked to a single Michigander who has beef with Canva.
There was a small window of time where President Trump announced
the first round of tariffs
and they were specifically focused on the auto industry.
And the UAW came out in support
because there was a world where a focused strategic tariff policy
would bring shifts back to some of our plants here in Michigan
and we've seen that happen.
But then to go just days later
and announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs
on basically every country on every good that we buy
with no consideration for the knowledge economy
that we have here in the United States.
It didn't account for the service industry that we provide.
It was just physical goods.
So now, yes, maybe we've brought a shift back at Lake Oregon.
That's a great thing.
We should all celebrate that.
But if all of a sudden the cost of everything else is skyrocketing
we are never going to grow bananas here in Michigan.
We don't have the climate to do it.
Your clothes, your kids shoes, everything is going up.
And there are a lot of, you know,
I think GM and Ford can weather that storm.
They can plan for it.
I mean Ford announced they took out a massive loan
just to be prepared.
But there are a lot of small businesses
who can't.
I think of a company like Detroit Axle,
which was here in my district in Ferndale,
that grew a massive business specializing
in refurbished auto parts.
Started by an immigrant family.
Great company that was employing
previously incarcerated Michiganders,
giving them a second chance.
I mean just a great success story.
And he said, these tariffs are killing me.
I got to close the business.
And they were about to expand.
They were going to open a second location in Michigan.
They were going to open another plant in Mexico.
And it's just gone.
Just like that.
Coming up, the conclusion of our own Molly Boygon's
interview with Michigan State Senator
and U.S. Senate candidate, Mallory McMorrow.
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So when you talk about targeted tariffs,
it sounds like you're saying there is a place for tariffs
in the automotive industry
that may not apply to other manufactured goods
that the U.S. just doesn't have the capacity to make.
But where is the target?
Are you suggesting targeting it by country,
targeting it more by part,
reducing the parts that are subjected to tariffs?
What does that targeted approach practically look like?
Yeah, I think it's all on the above.
Number one, I think it's developing it
with our allied countries,
considering the auto industry is a global industry,
that these vehicles travel,
especially here in Michigan,
across the border between Michigan and Canada,
upwards of two dozen times,
depending on the vehicle,
during the process of manufacture,
working with the companies themselves to understand,
okay, what does the global supply chain look like,
and then building a really thoughtful tariff policy
over time that, rather than throw everything
at the wall all at once,
which is what President Trump did,
and then is reacting, right?
I'm gonna announce everything,
and then in 30 days, I'm gonna cancel it,
and then two weeks later, we might put it back on,
and now it's 30%, now it's 10%.
I mean, it feels like it's ready fire aim
instead of let's build this collectively
with our trading partners,
with the companies who would be impacted,
and start small and see how it goes.
Because I imagine there's a world where,
had he just stuck with the initially announced tariffs
that just impacted the auto industry,
maybe we would have seen Lake Orient
as a great example of a success story
of vehicles coming back to be manufactured there.
Great, without all of the reciprocal tariffs
that kind of not even negate the progress,
but if you got your job back,
but now everything costs 30% more
for the rest of your life,
you're still negative on your take home pay.
How does the desire to return parts and vehicles
manufacturing to the US square with your contention earlier
that Michigan needs to compete with Silicon Valley
for engineering and technical talent?
Because you hear about this division
between the knowledge economy
and the manufacturing economy,
and on the one hand,
the contention with the tariffs
that it's skewed too far in the direction
of encouraging manufacturing
while not acknowledging the knowledge economy gains
that the US has made.
So how can we do both?
Yeah, I mean, I reject the idea
that there is a division,
and I would differentiate between Michigan
and Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley specializes in software and apps and tech.
And I remember when Tesla launched,
and looking at them as a company,
and a lot of my old boss, Frans Van Holthausen,
who was the head of design at Mazda's,
the head of design at Tesla now,
so a lot of my old colleagues went over to Tesla.
And I remember thinking then,
it's gonna be a rude awakening
to realize that designing hard tech
like a vehicle is much less forgiving.
You know, if your app is buggy
and your phone doesn't work,
you turn it off and you start over.
If your car doesn't work,
you crash and there are fatalities.
So what Michigan specializes in
is innovation into hard tech.
We know how to design and engineer things
that we then know how to build.
So I think you need to look no further
than what's happening down at New Lab
next to Michigan Central.
That is an entire facility
that their mission is to cultivate,
to find, to support startups in hard tech.
You know, it's not apps.
It's not software.
It's not services.
It's physical things.
And my belief is if we can incubate
a lot of those startups,
then as they expand
and they move out of New Lab,
I mean, that's the goal is that
those companies get big enough
that they can spin out on their own.
They're gonna need manufacturing facilities.
They're gonna need workers.
They're gonna need everything
that grows up around it.
And I fundamentally believe,
you know, as I said earlier,
Michigan became the automotive center
of the United States,
not because we manufactured it
because we invented it
and then manufacturing grew up around it.
So I believe if we look for the
what's next,
what's the next hard technology,
whether it's in auto,
whether it's in something else,
we should invent it here,
we should design it here,
we should innovate it here.
And then because we have all of the
capability and the workforce here,
we should build it here.
And I think that's how we support
both the knowledge economy
and manufacturing.
But my fear is that we are
overspending right now
in incentives and tax breaks,
trying to just get manufacturing
at the expense of the rest of
that pipeline in that process.
Michigan State Senate Majority Whip,
Mallory McMorro,
thank you so much for coming on Daily Drive.
Thanks, Molly, appreciate it.
A quick note before we go,
we also interviewed Senator McMorro's
two main opponents
in the Democratic primary race
for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat.
You can find our interview
with U.S. Congresswoman Hailey Stevens
on our August 11th episode,
and you can find Molly's interview
with Dr. Abdul El Sayed
on the August 27th show.
We're also working with the campaign
for former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers
to find a time for an interview.
Stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.
That's all for this bonus episode
of Daily Drive.
We'll be back on Monday
with a brand new full episode of the show.
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