Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, reported that Trump had taken the delegation representing more than half a dozen unions on a tour of the Oval Office, showing a level of respect that was “nothing short of incredible.” More praise came from Doug McCarron, president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. He described Trump’s inaugural address—judged by most to have been a belligerent spoken-tweet storm—as “a great moment for working men and women.”
It was hard to watch. Trump was already waging war on the most vulnerable workers in the economy, and there was talk of budget cuts so draconian they would mean mass layoffs for public sector workers like bus drivers. So why were these labor leaders, representing around a quarter of all unionized workers in the United States, breaking the most sacred principle of the union movement—solidarity with other workers? Most of the unions whose leaders toured the White House had been loyal to the Democrats for decades. Why choose this moment, when so many were in pain, to heap praise on Donald Trump?
Well, they explained that part of their deal with the devil had to do with Trump’s energy plans—all those pipelines. And some of it had to do with Trump’s pledge to spend on infrastructure (though it went unsaid, they may even have been buoyed by talk of spending $21 billion on the border wall with Mexico). But the clincher, the union heads were clear, was that here, finally, was a president who had their backs on free trade.
Indeed, Trump had wasted no time on that front. That same day, shortly before meeting with the union delegation, he signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the eleven-country trade deal that he’d railed against on the campaign trail as the “rape of our country.” At the signing ceremony where the US officially left the TPP, Trump announced, “It’s a great thing for the American worker.”
Subsequently, a few people wrote to me to ask if this might be the silver lining in Trump’s presidency. Wasn’t it a good thing that trade deals that many progressives had been criticizing for decades were now on the chopping block or, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, set to be reopened and renegotiated to “bring the jobs back”? I understand the desire to find bright sides to the daily chaos unfolding in the White House. But Trump’s trade plans are not one of them.
The whole thing reminds me of all the liberal hawks who backed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq because the war coincided with their desire to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein—the “humanitarian intervention” argument. There was nothing in the Bush—Cheney track record or worldview to suggest there would be anything democratic or humanitarian about their invasion and occupation of Iraq—and, sure enough, the occupation rapidly became the site of killing fields and torture committed by the US military and its contractors, as well as out-of-control war profiteering. So what is there in Trump’s track record, in his treatment of his own workers, in the appointments he has made, in the pro-corporate policies he has already pushed through, that should cause anyone to believe that the way he will renegotiate trade deals, or “bring back the jobs,” will in any way be in the interests of workers or the environment?
Rather than hope that Trump is going to magically transform into Bernie Sanders, and choose this one arena in which to be a genuine advocate for anyone who isn’t related to him, we would do far better to ask some tough questions about how it’s been possible for a gang of unapologetic plutocrats, with open disdain for democratic norms, to hijack an issue like corporate free trade in the first place.
The Race to the Bottom
Trump has made trade deals a signature issue for two reasons. The first, on full display that day at the White House, is that it’s a great way to steal votes from the Democrats. The right-wing pundit Charles Krauthammer—no fan of unions—declared on Fox News that Trump’s cozy union summit was a “great act of political larceny.”
The second reason is that Trump—who we know believes his own super-negotiator PR—has said he can negotiate better deals than his predecessors. But here’s the catch: by “better,” he doesn’t mean better for unionized workers, and certainly not better for the environment. He means better in the same way he always means better—better for him and his corporate empire, better for the bankers and oil executives who make up his administration. In other words, trade rules, if Trump gets his way, are about to get a lot worse for regular people—not just in the United States, but around the world.
You only have to look at what Trump has done since taking office. On the same day he flattered the union leaders by giving them a private tour, he also met with business leaders and announced plans to cut regulations by 75 percent and cut taxes for corporations to 15 percent. It’s workers who pay the price for policies like this. Without regulations, their jobs become more unsafe, with more on-the-job injuries, and it’s workers who use the services that are getting slashed to pay for tax cuts to the wealthy. Trump has already reneged on his promise to make sure the Keystone XL pipeline would be built with American steel, an early indication of the depth of his commitment to “Buy American, Hire American.”
There is also every reason to suspect that the administration’s plans to attract manufacturing back to the States will rely on rolling back many of the protections that unions have won over the last century—including the remaining protections for the right to bargain collectively. Many around Trump have pushed hard to make it more difficult for unions to organize, particularly with so-called right-to-work legislation, and with Republicans in control of the House and Senate, that priority will remain on the agenda.