President Trump called on the nation’s building trade unions Tuesday to pressure Congress to approve a massive $1 trillion plan to rebuild America’s roads and airports, but the head of the AFL-CIO said he’s worried that Wall Street is “hijacking” Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Speaking at a trade union conference in Washington, Mr. Trump urged iron workers, plumbers and electricians to remind lawmakers that labor now has a friend in the White House.
“All of you have come to the nation’s capital to call on members of the House and Senate to action,” Mr. Trump said. “When you see them, you can tell Congress that America’s building trades and its president are very much united. I’ve spent my life working side by side with American builders, and now you have a builder as your president.”
But moments after Mr. Trump finished his address, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told an audience across town that Mr. Trump “needs to decide who he stands with — the coal miners, farmers, steelworkers and other regular Americans who he promised to help in the campaign, or the Wall Street tycoons who are rigging the economy at our expense.”
“This decision will be the single greatest test of his presidency,” Mr. Trumka said. “We are closing in on the first 100 days of President Trump’s administration, and two very different factions have emerged. There is a Wall Street wing that undermines Donald Trump’s promises to workers, and a competing wing that could win the progress working people need.”
The labor chief criticized Mr. Trump for promoting the failed American Health Care Act that would have repealed and replaced Obamacare, and for proposing a federal budget that would cut job-training programs.
He said Mr. Trump “should use his office and influence to call for an end to workplace intimidation, reject ’right to work’ once and for all and promote and protect the freedom of every single worker to form or join a union and bargain for a better life.”
“Tweet that. Fight for that. Accomplish that,” Mr. Trumka said. “That’s how we’ll make America great.”
Mr. Trump said he has proven his commitment to American blue-collar workers by ending the Obama administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal and cutting regulations to speed approval of construction projects.
“Washington and Wall Street have done very, very well for themselves,” the president told union workers. “Now it’s your turn, and you’re going to be also sharing the wealth. This election was all about returning power to the people. The era of economic surrender has come to an end. We have surrendered as a country to outside interests. I’m not, and I don’t want to be, the president of the world. I’m president of the United States. And from now on, it’s going to be America first.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.