By ERNIE GOTTA
“I’m President of the UAW. We’re ready to work with Trump,” read a headline in The Washington Post that shocked many in the labor movement. Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), spent the better part of the 2024 presidential elections warning workers everywhere that Donald Trump only represented the billionaire class and called him a “scab.” Then, the day before Trump’s inauguration, Fain published an Op Ed explaining why his union needs to have a voice in developing U.S. trade policy. In the Op Ed, Fain endorsed Trump’s plan to implement tariffs and explained why, in his view, tariffs would be a necessary corrective following decades of devastating attacks on U.S. jobs and workers from neoliberal free trade agreements like NAFTA and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Fain is not the only union leader to support Trump’s trade policies. Why did the United Steel Workers union try to thwart the merger of U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel? Why did the International Longshore Association during their strike blame foreign companies for not adequately compensating U.S. workers and taking profits out of the country?
Why did the general president of the Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, when addressing the Republican National Convention in July 2024, parrot Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, saying, “We need trade policies that put American workers first?” O’Brien doubled down on vile anti-immigrant protectionist ideas on a podcast in which he interviewed Republican Senator Josh Hawley—who masquerades as a friend of the unions. O’Brien stated, “I think the biggest problem is people are trying to protect illegal aliens that come here and commit crimes, and that’s unacceptable. … Social issues are all well and good, but protecting illegal immigrants that come into our country to commit crimes and steal jobs, that’s a tough pill to swallow.”
For many, at first glance it seems logical that unions would rally to protectionist ideas after facing the carnage brought on by NAFTA and USMCA. So called “free trade” has had a deeply negative impact on jobs and wages in the U.S., but is Fain correct to say that protectionist policies geared around tariffs will be the answer to bringing manufacturing back to this country? Can protectionist policies like tariffs, import quotas, and other government regulations lead to less exploitation, higher wages, and better working conditions for the working class?
No. Capitalist trade policy is made by capitalists for the benefit of their own class. Whether it’s “free trade” or protectionism, the implementation of the policy is meant to protect and increase the profits of the ruling class.
There are times when the capitalists need higher revenue streams and favor a free trade approach. Of course, free trade is really “free” in name only and generally serves for the exploitation of one nation over another. In reality, free trade agreements like NAFTA establish zones that allow imperialist nations flexibility in deferring tariffs, managing inventory, and cash flow. These free trade agreements allowed U.S. companies to close down production lines in the U.S., cross the border into Mexico, and super-exploit the workers there.
This worked for a while as the U.S. was the undisputed hegemonic power and leading economy, but with the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and China and the subsequent rise of China and Russia as new imperialist powers, the situation has shifted significantly. The inter-imperialist rivalry with China in particular is driving some U.S. capitalists to favor protectionist policies in order to put up barriers and hurt the competition.
The resulting trade war will likely be a driver of inflation and put more economic burden on the working class not just in the U.S. but globally. One could also draw the conclusion that an escalating trade war could be the basis for the inter-imperialist rivalry to turn into a hot war.
Trump has said many times that tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. Is this true? No! While tariffs can have a negative impact on foreign countries, ultimately it would be U.S. importers who pay the tax directly to the U.S. Treasury and then recoup that tax by making U.S. consumers pay higher prices. Trump knows this but has created a narrative in which the U.S. is being taken advantage of in global trade. He posted on X, “This will be the Golden Age of America! Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe (and maybe not!). But we will make America great again, and it will all be worth the price that must be paid. We are a country that is now being run with common sense — and the results will be spectacular!”
Historically, the Tariff Act of 1789, the Tariff of 1816, and the McKinley Tariff of 1890 did nothing to benefit working people. McKinley was known as the “Napoleon of Protection” and every move he made was to benefit the interests of manufacturers. It’s no wonder that Trump wants to bring back the name McKinley to Mount Denali. More than just promoting settler colonial ideology, Trump is signaling a return to an era before 1913 when there was no income tax and protectionist policies were the dominant trade policy.
Protectionist policies also have an inherent downside for the capitalists. Frederick Engles observed in 1888, “Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and have therefore to protect them too. By so doing you again damage the industry that you first protected, and have to compensate it; but this compensation reacts, as before, on all other trades, and entitles them to redress, and so on ad infinitum.”
As always there will be a mad dash by the capitalists to take in as much profit as possible in the coming period. Along with the protectionist policies, Trump will also look to deepen cut taxes. The ruling class will also use their monopolized sections of industry to drive down real wages of workers and raise prices for consumers. Fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his right-wing Americans for Prosperity recently released an investment prospectus that outlines a $20 million plan to lobby elected officials with thousands of meetings in order to deepen the tax cuts made in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The most reactionary tendencies in the capitalist class see an opening to regain all the concessions made to the working class and oppressed communities from the labor movement of the 1930s and ’40s up through the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s. Trump, as a mouthpiece for the ruling class, uses phony pro-worker rhetoric to sell the unions and the broader working class on the notion that protectionist policies will reverse the degradation of their daily lives.
However, protectionist trade policies, attacks on immigrants, and other oppressed communities will not resolve the very real economic crisis that capitalism is enduring on a global scale. The reality for billions of workers around the world is more instability, worse wages, and poorer working conditions. What is the solution? How do working people escape being trapped in the vicious cycles brought on by the inherent flaws of the capitalist system?
If “America First” means profits for the rich over the needs of the people, and “free trade” is freedom for imperialists to exploit workers at will, then we can’t be sucked into their schemes and play by the rules of their system. Frederick Engles wrote in 1888, “A system of production based upon the exploitation of wage labor, in which wealth increases in proportion to the number of laborers employed and exploited, such a system is bound to increase the class of wage laborers, that is to say, the class which is fated one day to destroy the system itself.”
Engles continued, “Whether you try the Protectionist or the Free Trade will make no difference in the end, and hardly any in the length of the respite left to you until the day when that end will come.”
Working and oppressed people have to wage a relentless political struggle for independence from the capitalist class in their unions, on their campuses, and in their communities. This means, for example, that when U.S. Steel wants to make a deal that hurts the workers, the demand of the workers should be to open the corporation’s account books for all to see how they make their profits, and to put U.S. Steel under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.
When workers are exploited by U.S. companies in another country or rounded up at a militarized border, U.S. workers need to extend a hand of solidarity and demand an end to the injustice by withholding their labor power.
When the elections come around, the unions should no longer support this or that capitalist politician. They should instead hold a mass meeting among all the unions and all their rank-and-file members. This meeting should open a discussion on running their own candidates under the banner of a labor party. Working-class independence and international solidarity are the only way forward for working people.
