If the biggest news out of a speech on the economy is that President Donald Trump yelled an expletive at a protestor and flipped the bird, then the speech probably wasn’t a success.

So it was with Trump’s visit to Detroit on Tuesday, where he toured a Ford Motor plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and gave a mostly off-topic speech to the Detroit Economic Club.

He spent much of his time talking about Venezuela, Iran, the Somali community in Minnesota and the protests in Minneapolis. When he did turn to the economy, he couldn’t stay on a consistent message.

Almost a year into his presidency, Trump still blames and berates his predecessor for any economic pain Americans may feel. He claims a new American golden age is already here; but also, stay tuned because the best is yet to come.

This week, a healthcare affordability framework is apparently in the offing, a plan that Trump said would reduce premiums for millions of people and lower drug prices by thousands of percents.

Next week, there will be details on housing policies “so that every American who wants to own a home will be able to afford one”. Sure.

And somewhere, either now or in the future, gas will be $1.99 a gallon.

“The Trump economic boom has officially begun,” he said. “And it’s really begun almost from the beginning.”

Maybe having Trump out on the road talking about affordability isn’t such a great idea. Because, in speech after speech, Trump makes it plain that he believes the cost-of-living crisis is just a Democratic hoax, not something to take seriously.

Yet according to a WDIV/Detroit News poll of Michigan voters, 48.3% say that Trump’s economic policies have made the nation’s economy weaker, with 43.6% giving the president either a D or F on his handling of the economy.

Some 64 per cent say prices have gone up in the past year, with respondents overwhelmingly (82.5 per cent) singling out food and grocery prices having gone up the most.

Food prices had their largest month-to-month spike in three years, up 0.7 per cent in December even as Trump claimed grocery prices were down. The overall inflation rate remains steady at 2.7 per cent, above the two per cent target, despite Trump’s claims that “inflation is defeated”.

Trump won states like Michigan in 2024 promising a revitalisation of industries, particularly manufacturing, which saw steady contraction in 2025, in part due to tariff uncertainty.

In the meantime, Trump is throwing lots of ideas out there.

The president ordered Fannie and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, a move that pushed the mortgage rate down below six per cent, the lowest rate since February, 2023. He also wants Congress to pass a Bill that would bar Wall Street firms from buying single-family homes, likely a non-starter. He also thinks he can browbeat credit card companies into capping their interest rates at ten per cent, a progressive idea that is a no-go with the GOP.

His biggest economic plan appears to be hoping that Jerome Powell’s successor will lower interest rates.

Trump’s rhetoric and all-over-the-place-proposals make it difficult for Republicans such as Congressman John James, who is running for Governor of Michigan, to have a winning message of real accomplishment.

So they fall back on the blame game instead.

“The fact of the matter is the people of Michigan remember the Biden inflation that caused $1,000 per month increase in prices for Michigan families,” he said in a CNN interview.

“But we also recognise the great effort that the Republican House and Senate and President Trump signing the One Big Beautiful Bill into law helps offset the cost of buying a new car. Car loans are now tax deductible.” (The average cost of a new car is $50,000, a record high, according to Kelley Blue Book.)

James touted the millions of dollars in new investments coming into Michigan as a result of Trump’s policies but even those types of big projects don’t help average workers.

“People are worried about the cost of groceries. They’re worried about the cost of housing,” Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, said.

“Millions of people have lost their healthcare, and can’t afford their prescriptions. They can’t get care either for their child or long-term care for their parents or for a loved one.”

That is what Trump is up against. And his speeches and promises and proclamations about a “golden age” can’t compete with people struggling to afford their everyday lives — let alone get ahead.

On Monday, Trump cold-called Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren after she gave a speech in which she urged Democrats to “read the room” and to embrace an economically populist message.

“Americans are stretched to the breaking point financially and they will vote for candidates who name what is wrong and who credibly demonstrate that they will take on a rigged system in order to fix it,” Warren said in her speech.

Trump, easily distracted and full of grievance, can’t accurately “read the room” because he can’t ever seem to see anything wrong with what he is doing. This head-in-the-sand approach will almost certainly cost his party in November.

· Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion