Anti-Trump labor bosses declare war on their rank and file

OPINION:

Blue-collar manufacturing workers love Donald Trump, yet their union leaders have consistently refused to endorse him. This paradox has recently been displayed as Mr. Trump has sparred with United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain over the UAW’s endorsement of President Biden.

Mr. Trump is absolutely right that Mr. Fain is a “dope.” As I analyzed in an earlier column (“UAW suicide pact with Detroit Three will mean higher costs, lower profits, overseas manufacturing,” Nov. 7), Mr. Fain’s Pyrrhic victory in the union’s recent negotiations with American car manufacturers is merely a short-term triumph that effectively institutionalizes the offshoring of battery production and other key parts of the electric vehicle supply chain to China.

I’m reminded of similar deals United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis cut in the 1950s. While Lewis won higher wages and benefits for union members, his devastating concessions on mine mechanization would shrink the union’s membership by more than half, crippling it forever.

The question now is whether the leaders of major unions such as the Teamsters and United Steelworkers follow Mr. Fain’s lead and kiss the Biden ring, despite massive rank-and-file support for Mr. Trump. This is no small question: Rank-and-file union members swung the vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and thereby paved the way for his victory over Hillary Clinton.

Here’s the buried lead: It doesn’t really matter which candidate the union bosses endorse. Mr. Trump will still command a lion’s share of a rank and file that has little regard for these apparatchiks.

That’s why Mr. Trump has exposed Mr. Fain for the snarling dope he is. Rank-and-file UAW members share Mr. Trump’s concern about the latest electric vehicle threat from China and is ready to jump on the Trump train in 2024. But Mr. Fain can’t wrap his swelled head around that.

Why are union bosses like Mr. Fain so disrespectful of Mr. Trump and tone-deaf to their own rank and file? My four years in the Trump White House offer a unique perspective.

As a West Wing liaison with organized labor, I had more than one discussion about endorsing Mr. Trump in 2020 with Richard Trumka at the AFL-CIO, James Hoffa at the Teamsters, and Mr. Fain’s predecessor Doug Jones at the UAW. When push came to shove, each would not come to Mr. Trump’s side in 2020 despite the groundswell of support for Mr. Trump among their rank and file. I see their temerity rooted in the historical evolution of presidential politics.

Before 2016, the Republican Party of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney remained true to its Wall Street and corporate contribution roots and treated blue-collar workers as sacrificial lambs in the game of offshoring. This “American carnage,” as Mr. Trump would later call it, began with ripples in the 1970s and turned into a full-blown tsunami with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and the subsequent rape of America’s Rust Belt.

That carnage left America’s blue-collar manufacturing workers with no alternative other than the Democratic Party. Yet after endorsement after endorsement of Democrats and disappointment after disappointment in their performance, blue-collar manufacturing workers would come to know a Democratic Party that would differ from Republicans in only one meaningless regard: While neither party did anything to defend American manufacturing from the economic aggression of China and other nations, Democrats at least gave lip service to helping blue-collar America.

It wouldn’t be until 2015 that those who shower after work rather than before saw any hope. This new morning again in America began the moment Mr. Trump descended that escalator and declared his undying commitment to the renaissance of American manufacturing and a staunch defense against trade cheaters, particularly China.

Candidate Trump not only talked the talk the rank and file wanted to hear. As president, Mr. Trump would walk the walk with policy tools including Buy American, Hire American and tariffs on steel and aluminum and countries like China. Still, in the 2020 campaign, the labor bosses refused to endorse Mr. Trump.

It will likely be no different in 2024. America’s once-dominant manufacturing unions now barely subsist under a “woke” AFL-CIO umbrella that consistently embraces policies that are anathema to blue-collar manufacturing prosperity. Without any apparent self-awareness, the unions lobby for open borders, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a “path to citizenship,” and millions of illegal immigrants who will drive down the wages of American workers and drive many of their members into the unemployment lines.

Moreover, this new American carnage goes on even as this unprecedented immigrant horde spikes the crime rate, sucks on the welfare state teat, and overruns our schools and jails and major metropolitan areas.

Given this chessboard, no one in the Trump camp should fret over the antics of Shawn Fain. Nor should they get their hopes too high over possible endorsements from the Teamsters or the United Steelworkers. It is, as they say, what it is. Thank God union endorsements no longer matter.

• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk. This piece originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.