On April 2, Labor Notes weighed in on the debate over United Auto Workers (UAW) leader Shawn Fain’s support of Trump’s tariffs with an article by General Motors (GM) factory worker and Democratic Socialists of America member, Sean Crawford. 

The article, titled “Will Trump’s Tariffs Be Good for Auto Workers” rightfully questions the UAW president’s unwavering support for Trump’s trade policies, arguing that they are unlikely to increase auto manufacturing in the United States and that the fallout of a spiraling trade war could lead to inflation and layoffs which will hurt the UAW and further erode international worker solidarity — particularly between workers in the U.S. and Mexico. In response to Trump’s tariffs, Crawford calls instead for more cross-border solidarity and proposes a more focused use of tariffs to punish corporations that “violate workers’ rights,” but does not say how these selective tariffs would be applied or achieved.

While the article is a welcome, if somewhat belated, challenge from Labor Notes to Fain’s so far uncritical support of Trump’s tariffs, and while Crawford’s calls for more cross-border solidarity are a step in the right direction, the argument does not go nearly far enough and misses many important elements of the larger debate. In particular, Crawford’s proposals to use tariffs to punish companies that violate workers’ rights shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the state and capital, and what’s really behind Trump’s tariffs. Getting this question right is about more than just Trump’s trade policies, after all; it’s about the future direction of labor, and it’s in this spirit that we offer our critique below.

Sympathy for the Devil 

Although Crawford’s article offers an argument for why Trump’s trade policies won’t work, it surprisingly offers no criticism of his larger anti-worker, anti-immigrant, anti-student, and anti-trans agenda — as if these attacks are somehow secondary to the more important question of what’s supposedly best for the UAW and the U.S. auto industry. Indeed, Crawford’s only criticism of Trump is that there is no guarantee that the results of his tariffs will bring back U.S. manufacturing, a truism that every UAW member should have already taken to heart by now. He also says nothing of Trump’s further weaponization of the National Labor Relations Board, the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, or the massive tax cuts for the rich that are on the table. All of these are attacks on the working class, and agreeing to negotiate with someone who holds you in such contempt, as Fain has said he would do, is not only a fools’ errand, it provides cover for these attacks, and promotes the illusion that Trump actually cares about working people. Saying this directly and unequivocally is important.  

But this failure to denounce Trump’s larger agenda is also a betrayal of the global working class. Instead of rejecting Trump’s tariffs for what they are —: an attempt to impose US Interests upon global markets —, the article takes a purely economistic approach, interested only in whether or not they will “work” and how they will affect auto workers. This is especially enervating in an article that otherwise honestly and rightfully wants to develop more cross-border union solidarity. The article also ignores the ways that these tariffs are going to be used to fuel the project of U.S. imperialism to force semi-colonial countries like Mexico and Vietnam to revise their own trade policies in ways that will benefit U.S. capital at the expense of the workers in those countries. 

This absence of any discussion of labor’s need to directly confront Trump’s vicious attacks only provides cover for leaders like Fain who have publicly stated they are willing to “work with” the president. This has never worked for labor with any president, and there is no reason to believe it will work with Trump.

Bourgeois politicians — whether Democrats or Republicans — govern for the capitalist class, never for the working class.

Know Thy Enemy

While pointing out their shortcomings is good, any criticism of these tariffs has to include an understanding of the totality of the global imperialist system under which they are being proposed. Internationalism and class solidarity, after all, demand that workers look beyond their local interests to build the larger power of the working class that benefits us all. 

Like Crawford, we agree that Trump’s tariffs cannot and will not benefit working people, but that’s not because they are poorly designed; it’s because they are simply not intended to and never have been. Fain has argued that tariffs are the first step to ending the disaster of globalization and undoing some of the damage caused by NAFTA, but any gains for U.S. autoworkers would be incidental, not intentional. Indeed, regardless of Trump’s rhetoric about bringing back good working-class jobs, these tariffs are solely designed to benefit sectors of the bourgeoisie — in this case, the imperialist bourgeoisie of the United States. There’s no doubt that Trump and his government, like all preceding U.S. administrations, benefits these sectors. This is why it’s so strange to claim that tariffs are beneficial to workers, as Fain and Sean O’Brien, leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), have done.

In contrast to Fain, Crawford argues that cross-border solidarity and tariffs on companies that violate workers’ rights can somehow solve or begin to solve the problems created by globalization. As part of this argument, he references the important solidarity that was displayed by Mexican auto workers in Silao in 2019, when they refused to take up overtime during the UAW strike at GM. This is an important expression of internationalism, for sure, but Crawford’s proposals for supposedly “pro-worker” tariffs make no sense at all and would actually undermine attempts to build such solidarity. Indeed, in many ways Crawford makes the same mistake as Fain when he proposes that the U.S. should impose more selective tariffs on companies that “violate workers’ rights,” since every company violates workers’ rights every day; that’s fundamentally how capitalism works. Suggesting that we could somehow improve working conditions or legislate away exploitation with tariffs only sows further illusions in the power of the state to act as a neutral arbiter of class conflict, a dangerous idea that actively undermines workers’ self-organization. 

Internationalism, after all, is not something that can be created by committee or legislated into being. It is practiced, organized, and developed in the most intense moments of class struggle and is fundamental and essential for the triumph of the working class and the people. It is a product of working class political independence in action and cannot happen when working people mistake their enemy for their ally, and attempt to make peace with capitalist modes of production as the labor bureaucracy has done since its birth. If there’s international solidarity among workers, both nationally and internationally, it has to be against the business interests and governments who attack them with layoffs, preventing union organization, reducing labor costs by paying lower wages, etc. Any larger union that includes Mexican and Canadian autoworkers, as Crawford proposes at the end of his piece, would be impossible without such class independence. 

A proletarian internationalism has to reject the idea that it can work with the state, raising its voice against imperialist business speculation and profit at the expense of our lives, our jobs, and working conditions — especially those in smaller and weaker countries who are always the most affected. Focusing only on whether or not these tariffs will benefit North American autoworkers, as Crawford does, only leaves the door open for Fain and the UAW to negotiate better terms for themselves and the companies that manufacture under the terms of the new U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement (USMCA) without any concern for the impact of such deals on the larger global working class. 

If tariffs or a renegotiated USMCA were to actually benefit the UAW, what would it mean for autoworkers in China or other countries that are not part of Crawford’s plan for an “international solidarity movement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada”? What does it mean for those workers who will lose their jobs or face even more repression and exploitation to compensate for the profits lost to tariffs? And what does it mean for southern workers in the U.S. who will be the next source of cheap exploited labor for global companies wanting to sell to the U.S. market? 

Is that beneficial for American workers? For Shawn Fain, whom Labor Notes continues to platform, and whom Crawford does not criticize nearly as sharply as he should, it seems the answer is yes. 

Real Workers’ Power and Solidarity Require Class Independence 

If activists like Crawford and organizations like Labor Notes are serious about building the power of labor and all working people, they have to stop defending or legitimizing leaders who continue to make deals with the parties of the bosses. 

Real workers’ power requires building organizations that are independent of the Democrats and Republicans but also independent of the bureaucrats who hold back the power and creative organization of the rank and file. We need to build political organizations that break with capitalism and speak out against our enemies, dispelling illusions in incremental improvements made by governments that are enemies of workers worldwide. Only then can we develop the broadest force to fight the bosses and the state, and tackle the larger crisis of capitalism which is dragging our world toward ruin.