During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Sean Fain unabashedly supported President Trump’s tariffs.
In his remarks, the labor leader said that the country’s labor force has been in crisis mode since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed and that there is “no other issue “that has affected our economy and working-class people.
“We’re in a triage situation,” Fain said on the program. “Tariffs are an attempt to stop the bleeding from the hemorrhaging of jobs in America for the last 33 years.”
Fain’s interview comes after the President granted a one-month exemption for vehicles covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA); the successor of NAFTA, from newly imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada at the behest of Detroit Big Three automakers Ford (F) , General Motors (GM) , and Stellantis (STLA) .
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain recently weighed in on automaker tariffs.
NAFTA, USMCA hurt American auto workers, Fain said
Fain’s main qualm was with what he sees as the United States’ “broken” trade policy. He pointed out to This Week host Jonathan Karl that the auto manufacturing sector lost “millions of jobs” since NAFTA took effect in 1994 and still feels its effects.
Specifically, he pointed out that more than 2,000 people were laid off at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant in Michigan after Stellantis moved Ram Truck production to one of its facilities in Mexico.
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“[They] could move those trucks right back here to Warren, Michigan,” said Fain.
After a lengthy aside about his personal politics, he did not refer to Mexican workers as an enemy of the American economy. He characterized them as part of an underclass that giant, multi-billion dollar American corporations are taking advantage of.
“Our neighbors to the south — Mexican workers — aren’t the enemy,” Fain declared.
“They’re being exploited, and it’s because of corporate greed, and that’s what’s got to stop,” he said. “The United States is the market everyone wants to sell in and we should have reciprocal trade laws where people have the same standard of living.”
During a March 5 press conference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president notified the respective auto CEOs “to start investing, start moving—shift production here to the United States of America, where they will pay no tariff.”
Despite endorsing Kamala Harris during the past Presidential election, the labor-focused UAW praised Trump’s decision to impose tariffs before the President announced the auto industry carve-out.
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Since the election, the union’s stance on the president has softened to a malleable level, saying that it is “in active negotiations with the Trump Administration about their plans to end the free trade disaster,” and that they “look forward to working with the White House to shape the auto tariffs in April to benefit the working class.”
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“Tariffs are a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals,” the UAW said in a statement on its website. “We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.”
Furthermore, they stated that companies, rather than the president, will be responsible for higher consumer prices, characterizing the “disruption” that tariffs can incur as a symptom of their greed.
“[…] if corporate America chooses to price-gouge the American consumer or attack the American worker because they don’t want to pay their fair share, corporate America bears the blame for that decision,” they said. “[…] We want to see corporate America, from the auto industry and beyond, recommit to the working class that makes the products and generates the profits that keep this country running.”
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