Politics
WATCH: UAW Boss Stuns MSNBC Hosts, Praises Trump’s Tariffs: ‘Bring Work Back’
A top boss in America’s largest auto union praised President Donald Trump for sticking to his guns amid a high-stakes international tariff war that he promises will bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Despite endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris, the United Auto Workers have come solidly around to Trump since he began instituting sharp tariffs on other countries, which for decades have benefited from U.S. companies shifting their manufacturing and production lines overseas. The change “will bring work back” to his union members, UAW president Shawn Fain told a stunned MSNBC host on Monday.
“Now, we’ve been very clear,” Fain said. “We do believe, and we know, when it comes to auto, when it comes to heavy truck, and agricultural implementation, we know that tariffs will influence these companies to do the right thing and reinvest in this country and reinvest in factories in this country.”
“At the end of the day, we believe that Stellantis and these companies will bring work back because of these tariffs,” Fain added later, according to the Daily Caller.
MSNBC host Simone Sanders-Townsend, a former spokeswoman for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), struggled to square Fain’s support for Trump’s tariffs with his comments last year labeling the Republican a “scab” only interested in selling out the working class. His remarks came during a speech at the Democratic National Convention, where he offered the union’s endorsement to Harris.
“Since NAFTA’s inception in 1993, we’ve lost 90,000 manufacturing facilities in this country. Millions of jobs, and these weren’t, you know, low-end jobs. These were jobs that paid decent wages, had good benefits, retirement security-” Fain said before Sanders-Townsend interrupted him.
“But here’s my thing… NAFTA was 30 years ago. The situation that we are dealing with right now, and I agree with you, I’m on the side of the folks that said they… did the American workers wrong, absolutely,” Sanders-Townsend said. “But right now we are dealing with a situation where it’s not — these are blanket tariffs. We are dealing with situation where manufacturing is not going to come back in two weeks. So what? How, I’m just, I’m really struggling to figure to understand how UAW has aligned itself with Trump on this.”
Although manufacturing plants and subsequent jobs may not return overnight, Fain responded by saying it’s important for Trump to stay the course and let the economic pressure wind its way through other countries’ economies.
“NAFTA is still causing us to lose jobs in this country. Our broken trade system is still causing us to lose jobs in this country and no one from either party has been willing to even address the issue for 30-plus years. That’s the first thing,” Fain said. “And we support tariffs as a tool, a tool in the toolbox, not the end all be all. We got to fix the broken trade system. But tariffs are a motivator to make these companies do the right thing.”
WATCH:
Investors breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Trump lowered blanket tariffs on most other countries to 10% while keeping in place a historic 125% tariff on China. The country’s communist government is struggling to respond, sending President Xi Jinping on a tour of Asian countries this week in a display of supposed unity in the face of U.S. antagonism.
