'Single-biggest threat to our local economy': GOP mayor fears 'devastating' Trump plan

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Michael Taylor voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024. In fact, he voted against him.

A Republican mayor who voted against Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024 is hitting the panic button over fears that his community's economy will collapse if the president follows through on his tariff threats.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Michael Taylor, mayor of Sterling Heights since 2015, lamented that tariffs may be coming and that his community can't deal with possible change is "coming at a breakneck speed" since Trump took office.

As the Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. wrote, Sterling Heights, just north of Detroit, is an "auto-industry-dominated city" that could see massive numbers of jobs lost if the president makes good on his threats to Canada and Mexico.

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According to Mayor Taylor, "We’re still scrambling to figure out what it all means," before adding, "If those tariffs go into effect as promised, it would be devastating," and labeling it as potentially, “the single-biggest threat to our local economy.”

According to the Post, "If Trump’s tariff threats materialize, this region of the country dominated by the domestic auto industry stands to take as big a hit as anywhere," with Wootson writing, "Billions of dollars in goods crisscross between Canada and the United States from points in Michigan, and economists and industry analysts warn that tariffs or, worse, an escalating trade war could kneecap the economy ofa region already battered by globalization and foreign competition."

Matt Ross, a finance professor at Western Michigan University, claimed there is good reason to fear a trade war over tariffs.

“It’s really hard to know how this will move through the economy,” he explained. "For a state that imports a lot to have a potential trade war on the horizon with its two closest partners … residents of Michigan should actually be perhaps a little bit terrified.”

As for Mayor Taylor, he confessed, “I can understand that the southern border and immigration policy is a major part of Trump’s platform, and it’s something that I think a lot of Sterling Heights voters and citizens elected him to try to resolve in one way or the other. But at the cost that it will have for our local economy, I think it would just be staggering.”

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