On March 4, the United Auto Workers (UAW), led by the Democrats’ favorite labor leader Shawn Fain, issued a short and, for many likely perplexing, communique, simultaneously embracing President Trump’s latest round of tariffs and railing against “so-called ‘free trade’” policies that have killed “good blue-collar jobs in America.” The UAW leadership argues that Trump is taking “aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.” But, as Fain should know, Trump’s game of tariffs has nothing to do with helping the working class at home or abroad. On the contrary, as Trump’s constant vacillations and extensions show, these tariffs are just another way to impose U.S. imperial interests in its trade war with China and to extract further concessions from its semi-colonial neighbors like Mexico, neither of which is in the interests of U.S. workers or the global working class. 

At the same time, the absolute lack of any criticism of Trump (who has launched an all-out assault on U.S. labor, immigrants, trans people, and the movement for Palestine) only fuels the contemptible argument that his actions are somehow in the interests of American workers, which other labor traitors like Teamsters President Sean O’Brien have been promoting. It also shows the ways in which the union bureaucracy is willing to ignore all but its most immediate interests when it feels its back is against the wall, even if that means cozying up to right-wing Bonaprtists like Trump. The idea that any union of working people would side with Trump’s reactionary trade policy also reveals the chauvinist ideological brain-rot that still exists among so much of the labor bureaucracy. Breaking with that logic will require a long overdue political struggle within the U.S. labor movement.

Yes, NAFTA Was a Disaster 

Not everything the UAW said was necessarily wrong. The statement rightly calls out the disaster that was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has since metamorphosed into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). NAFTA, as the UAW says, did disrupt parts of the U.S. manufacturing base by allowing U.S. capital to more easily exploit Mexican labor, especially in the maquiladora corridor, where largely unorganized workers still earn sometimes less than the equivalent of $20 a day. This did lead to a decline in some higher-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs and, thanks to a weak labor movement in the United States, contributed to the driving down of wages for the labor aristocracy in particular. Auto workers at the big three plants, for instance, have seen their wages decrease significantly over the last several decades, and the use of low paid part-time workers, who often receive few or no benefits, has increased dramatically, threatening the strength and power of unions like the UAW, who allowed those tiers to be created in the first place. 

However, as the UAW statement unfortunately leaves out, NAFTA also devastated Mexican farmers, particularly indigenous peasant farmers who lost their livelihoods due, in large part, to a flood of cheap subsidized U.S. corn imports. Many of these farmers were proletarianized as a consequence, becoming a source of even cheaper labor for foreign capital within Mexico, making it an even more attractive destination for U.S. manufacturers. In other words, those trade policies were not only bad for U.S manufacturing workers but were part of an imperialist project that was devastating for the people of Mexico. 

Failing to mention such a basic fact, while exclusively decrying the loss of U.S. jobs, as the UAW does, reveals a lack of international solidarity. Indeed, regardless of Fain’s speechifying about how “an injury to one is an injury to all,” when push comes to shove, the labor bureaucracy always takes the side of its own workers and the “national interest.” As Leon Trotsky pointed out, this is one of the clear limits of trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay, whose leaders, in the absence of a revolutionary proletariat, cleave to the state for protection and advantage. But this kind of reactionary, nationalist approach only weakens our unions and the working class as a whole. NAFTA existed because it was profitable for the bosses. Trump stands “against” NAFTA only to build a more nationalist brand of ruling class power against workers. 

Tariffs Don’t Work Like That

While their criticism of NAFTA and “free trade” is on point, the UAW leadership’s arguments about Trump’s tariffs are not only politically backward, they are completely wrong-headed on a number of fundamental levels. The tariffs are no solution to the problems created by NAFTA and the USMCA, as the statement implies. On the contrary, they will almost certainly exacerbate those problems.

First of all, tariffs don’t actually do what Fain and the UAW seem to think they do. The rationale behind the kind of tariff policy that the UAW supports (although they offer no criticism of Trump’s sweeping approach) is that they can be used selectively to help protect and grow certain industries like auto manufacturing. While there is some logic to this idea in the abstract, in reality it is much trickier. Limiting imports of automobiles or auto parts from Mexico, for instance, could have any number of negative consequences. 

Auto companies, in an attempt to protect their profits and access to cheap labor, could simply move some of that manufacturing to other states over a period of time, driving the global labor arbitrage that tariffs are supposedly meant to address. This is already happening in states like Vietnam, which are becoming new hubs for foreign manufacturing. Likewise, U.S. auto companies, perhaps with the help of the U.S. state, could simply impose greater levels of exploitation upon those same foreign workers in order to compensate in part for the increased costs due to tariffs. In the unlikely event that such companies would actually feel compelled to onshore production, they would of course do so in parts of the country where unions are weak or non-existent, creating an internal low-cost labor force most likely composed of precarious immigrant workers. Kim Moody has already demonstrated how capital relocated U.S. manufacturing not only to Mexico but also to the American South, making the argument that the bosses were looking desperately for cheap labor and unorganized workers. 

And, of course, most auto companies will simply increase prices while simultaneously seeking to shrink wages at home, squeezing workers both in the workplace and the market. Such a situation would not only hurt the working class in Mexico and the United States, but would further drive a wedge between those workers, fueling nationalism and weakening international solidarity.

Regardless of all this, the very idea that tariffs can or would (or are even the best way to) grow U.S. manufacturing is spurious at best. And this is largely because the supply chains between the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China are already so interconnected that even if auto companies wanted to, disentangling them would not only take years, but would be prohibitively expensive — so expensive that some companies would not survive the transition. For instance, many automobiles sold on the U.S. market, and many U.S. automobiles sold abroad are made from parts that are manufactured across the world. In fact, some auto parts, many of which move back and forth between Mexico and the United States more than once, would be hit with huge fees both coming and going, thanks to reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs, which Canada has already threatened to impose. 

This may seem like it would create an incentive to onshore production, and Trump has told U.S. auto companies to shift all of their production to the United States, but that’s not necessarily the case. Those companies, including those that manufacture parts in the United States, would face serious losses and be forced to undertake massive layoffs, even as foreign auto companies continued to benefit from cheap labor abroad. The result would be that foreign made cars would still be competitive in the U.S. market even after the cost of import tariffs, thus undermining the very reason for passing these tariffs to begin with. This fact was made glaringly apparent when Trump announced an exemption for auto manufacturers just a day after the latest tariffs took effect. While such an exemption could make the fallout for the tariffs a little easier to bear for the Big Three, it would of course do little to assuage the pain of the stagflation that would almost certainly result from an extended and escalating policy of tariffs that would hit the entire working class. 

The Bourgeois State Can Never Be on Our Side

Amazingly, the UAW’s answer to that problem is to wave it away and blame the negative economic effects of Trump’s tariffs on corporate America, not the tariffs themselves.

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.

This statement bizarrely presumes that the problems with the economy are somehow due to bad actors (corporations) and not the logical outcome of a system built on profit that cannot function without exploitation. As if President Trump’s tariffs and the rest of his agenda were somehow unrelated to greasing the wheels of exploitation that allow corporate giants to suck every last drop of blood from working people. As if Trump were somehow not a representative of the bourgeois class or that he could somehow be persuaded (who knows why?) to take action on behalf of the working class. 

This idea that the capitalist state can ever be a fair arbiter of class struggle, or ever act in the interests of the working class, is one of the reasons why our unions have become so weak. The UAW leadership believes that tariffs can stave off job losses and wage cuts for their members. They say they are willing to work with Trump in order to get a seat at the proverbial table. But what about the rest of us? Instead of building a movement of the entire working class to impose its demands, the path forward being offered is to sit with the rich and negotiate, hoping for some concessions in exchange for supporting an openly anti-worker and pro-imperialist administration.

The ongoing decline in union density proves that this is a losing strategy, not only for labor, but for all working people. If we are serious about rebuilding a fighting labor movement, we have to learn again how to fight both the bosses and the state. This means getting rid of bureaucratic traitors like Fain and O’Brien, it means learning again how to defy anti-worker legislation that limits our right to strike, and it means building a defensive united front of unions, non-unionized workers, immigrants, students, and all the oppressed to defeat Trump’s reactionary agenda.