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Donald Trump railed against Joe Biden during a rally at an auto parts factory in the Detroit suburbs on Wednesday night, eschewing the second Republican presidential primary debate to court blue-collar workers in the Midwest.

“You built this country, you love this country, and you are the ones who make this country run,” Trump said to cheers from the crowd, as he attacked car companies and slammed the Biden administration for its electric vehicle push.

“I’m here tonight to lay out a vision for a revival of economic nationalism and our automobile manufacturing lifeblood which they’re sucking out of our country,” Trump said as he vowed to put “America first” and bring offshore car manufacturing back to the US.

Trump appeared at a non-union factory just one day after Biden joined the picket line in support of striking members of the United Auto Workers union.

But the former president and current frontrunner for the Republican party’s nomination in 2024 begged for the endorsement of Shawn Fain, the UAW president, on Wednesday.

“Get your union leaders to endorse me, and I’ll take care of the rest,” Trump told the rally.

Fain has withheld an endorsement for Biden, saying it must be “earned”. But he has been openly critical of Trump, declining to meet the former president this week in Michigan and telling CNN there was a “pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a non-union business”.

“All you have to do is look at his track record — his track record speaks for itself,” Fain said.

Trump has now skipped two Republican presidential primary debates, and is increasingly looking to position himself as the presumed GOP candidate, targeting his attacks on Biden rather than his fellow Republicans. Trump and his allies have argued that he does not need to appear at the debates given the extent of his lead.

Wednesday’s debate was being broadcast by Fox News from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, a symbolic venue for the party, even though traditional Reagan-era conservatism has made way for Trump-inspired populism and isolationism in recent years.

Since the first Republican debate on August 23, Trump’s lead in national polling over Ron DeSantis, his main challenger in the race, has expanded further, with 54 per cent of the party’s primary voters backing the former president, while 13.8 per cent support the Florida governor, according to the 538.com average.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, has since moved into third place with support from 6.3 per cent of voters, matching Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech investor.

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