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There Were Numerous Anti Trump Aspects to Fain’s Arguments starting with the heading that follows:
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What The Working Class Needs On Trade
• Every time an autoworker dares to ask for fair pay, a decent retirement, healthcare, or work-life balance, the automakers threaten their job by exploiting a broken trade system that is set up to intimidate and threaten workers on both sides of the border.
• The UAW has encouraged the Trump administration to take clear, aggressive action to bring back good, union auto jobs. We are heartened by the significant measures they have announced today, and we urge the administration to take similar action to protect and reshore the heavy truck sector. Beyond tariffs, a continued, dramatic shift in our country’s trade agreements and economic policies will be necessary to end the free trade disaster.
• The next step is to immediately begin renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which has only perpetuated NAFTA’s harmful effects by increasing the trade deficit with Mexico and allowing automakers to offshore U.S. jobs and drive a race to the bottom.
In a new trade deal, autoworkers have some simple demands:
1. A significant number of cars that are sold in the U.S. should be made in the U.S., with strong wages and good working conditions like those that generations of UAW autoworkers have fought and died for.
2. Companies must not be allowed to close factories and ship jobs to high-exploitation, low-wage countries, and to pad already-massive profits by driving a race to the bottom among autoworkers. This includes a North American minimum wage to significantly raise pay and benefits for Mexican autoworkers, along with stronger protections for labor rights and penalties for offshoring, so that workers are no longer forced to compete with one another over crumbs while the automakers walk away with a bigger and bigger slice of the pie.
3. Fix the auto parts supply chain, following the same principles: fair wages and benefits for all, and an increase in American-made parts for American-assembled and American-sold vehicles.
“We can fix our broken trade deals to benefit workers. But we must be consistent, send clear signals to the auto industry, and make sure that working-class people – who have paid the price for so-called “free trade” for 30 years – don’t pay the price for this transition back to high-road manufacturing jobs. As they shift their supply chains and investments to the US, auto companies that have enjoyed years of record profits should absorb the cost of these tariffs rather than passing them on to consumers, and the UAW would support legislative or regulatory action requiring them to do so. Workers must be held harmless during any disruption that accompanies the reshoring process, with financial support from the federal government if necessary. And finally, the working class can’t wait. The auto companies have been given time to plan, and now it’s time to act,” Fain said.
