The head of the nation’s largest auto union praised President Donald Trump on Monday for holding firm in a high-stakes international tariff battle that he says will help bring millions of manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
Although the United Auto Workers had previously endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris, the union has increasingly rallied behind Trump since he began imposing steep tariffs on foreign nations—countries that, for decades, benefited from American companies moving production overseas. The shift in policy “will bring work back” to union members, UAW President Shawn Fain told a surprised MSNBC host.
“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 spokesperson for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), appeared visibly caught off guard as she tried to reconcile UAW President Shawn Fain’s support for Trump’s tariffs with his past criticism of the former president. Just last year, Fain had labeled Trump a “scab” who, in his view, was only interested in betraying the working class. The comments were made during a speech at the Democratic National Convention, where Fain formally endorsed Kamala Harris on behalf of the union.
“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,” she added. While acknowledging that manufacturing plants and jobs won’t return overnight, Fain emphasized the importance of Trump staying the course, arguing that sustained economic pressure needs time to work 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.”