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SALT LAKE CITY — Vice President Mike Pence will visit Merit Medical Systems in South Jordan on Thursday, two sources familiar with the visit confirmed Monday.
Pence is scheduled to speak at the South Jordan headquarters of Merit Medical at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, after spending the night in Utah, Merit Medical Chairman and CEO Fred Lampropoulos told KSL. He said the vice president will be joined by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
“How often do you get a member of the cabinet and have a vice president of the United States come to the state?” Lampropoulos said, calling the visit a “great honor not just for Merit, but for the state of Utah. It’s important.”
The audience for Pence’s speech on the new trade accord between the United States, Canada and Mexico will include employees, local officials, as well as area business leaders and other invited guests, he said.
About half of Merit Medical’s 6,600 employees around the world are based in Utah. The company has $100 million in production in Mexico and a direct sales force in Canada, making the free movement of products central to the company, Lampropoulos said.
The Deseret News reported last week that the vice president was tentatively expected to visit the Wasatch Front on Thursday to speak on international trade, according to sources in Washington, the U.S. Senate, and in Utah.
Pence was initially scheduled to speak at the Midvale headquarters for online retailer Overstock.com, but the appearance was canceled after controversial comments by the company’s CEO, sources said.
The remarks by Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne were in response to a blog post detailing his involvement in the federal government’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election.
In his statement, Byrne described himself as “the notorious ‘missing Chapter 1’ of the Russian investigation” and referred to federal agents he claimed to have assisted as the “Men in Black.”
“Unfortunately, this third time turned out to be less about law enforcement and more about political espionage conducted against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and to a lesser degree, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz),” Byrne said.
A company spokesman said the remarks were representative only of Byrne’s personal views and that the company “remains independent of the situation.”
Exactly where in Utah the vice president would visit and who he would be meeting with was unconfirmed until Monday night.
The visit will follow an appearance in Michigan. Pence tweeted last week that he’ll be in Detroit on Monday to talk about the economy.
Pence’s previously visited Utah to shore up support for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
