On “Liberation Day,” Donald Trump shared the stage with Brian Pannebecker, a retired UAW member and founder of Autoworkers for Trump. Decrying the closure of “plant after plant after plant,” Pannebecker declared that UAW members “support Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs 100%” to cheers from workers in the crowd.
Trump cynically used these handpicked workers as props in his political theater, but many labor leaders also support his brand of protectionism. There’s been open flirtation between prominent union tops and the MAGA camp.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention and recently hosted Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, at the union’s 2025 Unity Day. Others like the ILA’s Harold Daggett and Steamfitters Local 638’s Bobby Bartels endorsed Trump in 2024.
Shawn Fain and the UAW
Less than a year ago, UAW President Shawn Fain called Kamala Harris a “fighter for the working class” and predicted a second Trump term would be “a complete disaster.” Now he’s stepped into the spotlight as an anti-free trade crusader.
Appearing on The Lever podcast wearing a “Ross Perot Was Right” T-shirt, Fain attacked NAFTA:
Look at Flint, Michigan. Look at Ohio. Look at Wisconsin. Look at Pennsylvania. Look all over the Midwest and really all over the country: all those industries have just vanished …
It’s what Ross Perot said in the debate between Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Perot back in 1992, when he said, “We’re going to hear a giant sucking sound of all of our jobs going south.” It’s exactly what happened.
While distancing himself from Trump’s “carpet bombing” approach to protectionism, Fain sang the praises of tariffs on auto imports:
Tariffs are a tool. They’re a mechanism to force these companies to start doing the right thing and looking at American workers and looking at American jobs, which have been left behind for three decades now.
It’s telling that Fain could find no one better to explain the impact of NAFTA on American workers than Ross Perot, who was once the second wealthiest man in America. In the absence of a mass communist party with a presence in the unions, the dominant ideas in the labor movement are those of the class enemy.
Will capitalists ““do the right thing”?
Most unions backed Bill Clinton’s Democrats in the 1990s. The party repaid labor’s loyalty by ramming NAFTA down their throats. Unions opposed to NAFTA embraced protectionism as an alternative. It’s no surprise that Trump’s message on trade resonated with millions across the Rust Belt. He was only repeating what their union leaders preached 30 years before.
Fain is right when he says that NAFTA decimated American industry, undermining many unions. But protectionist “solutions” are pure snake oil. Free trade and protectionism are both capitalist policies intended to make workers pay for the crisis of the bosses’ system. Capitalists will never “do the right thing” for workers.
The trade war will undercut the income of millions of American workers through inflation and job cuts, undermining the domestic market Fain hopes the auto bosses will invest in. Last month, Stellantis laid off 900 US workers, half of whom are organized in the UAW, and halted production at plants in Canada and Mexico, affecting the jobs of about 4,500 workers.
Auto production is internationally integrated—raw materials and component parts cross borders many times before a finished car rolls off the line. Stellantis claims it’s tightening its belt to account for added costs brought on by tariffs. As the trade war continues to develop, more UAW members will be on the chopping block.
It’s not only autoworkers who will suffer. ILA leaders backed Trump, but will port workers benefit from a slowdown in world trade? Fewer ships will mean fewer jobs on the docks.
Bobby Bartels is one of the most strident pro-Trump voices in the labor movement, but as one member of Local 638 told The Communist, “The economic situation is going to severely affect the union construction industry, which is already in dire straits … After this project is over, I’ll likely be out of work for a while.”
Pitting workers against one another, industry vs. industry, country vs. country, as both protectionism and free trade do, is a recipe for defeat in the class struggle. A union leader in Canada—where the UAW represents thousands of workers—recently declared, “Right now, UAW and us, we’re not friends. The gloves are off as far as I’m concerned.”
Proletarian internationalism needed
Workers and their unions everywhere will be the victims of this trade war, just as they were victims in the era of free trade. The only way to defend and expand quality jobs, wages, and conditions in America and all countries is militant, class-independent struggle animated by a spirit of internationalism.
Capitalism has created a highly integrated world economy. In order for humanity to enjoy its benefits, we must throw off the capitalist parasites and their narrow nation-states and plan economic production on a global scale. Only world proletarian revolution can end the degrading competition between workers separated by artificial boundaries.