Bulwark Takes - Auto Union Boss Is Sucking Up To Trump On Tariffs. It’s Going To Backfire.

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger talk United Auto Workers union leader Shawn Fain’s support of Trump's tariffs as an auto-industry steel supplier announces layoffs — and why it will probably backfire for the union boss.

Hey guys, Tim Miller from the bulwark here with my buddy Andrew Egger who writes our morning shots newsletter. You can get that at the bulwark.com. We wanted to talk about a the latest fuck around and find out of the Trump era. This time it's union boss edition. Sean Fain has gained some popularity on the populist left UAW head was out over the weekend praising the Trump tariffs, particularly auto tariffs. And then last night, Trump announced a huge increase in auto tariffs. And then this morning, we hear some news that one such auto company is firing some workers. So we'll get to discuss the extent of the connection there. But first, Andrew, why don't I play you just Sean Fain talking about the Trump tariffs on ABC over the weekend? You know, there is no single issue in this country that has affected our economy and working class people and their jobs,

the NAFTA, the USMCA, and our trade laws, our broken trade system. And we're in a crisis mode. And we are triaging right now. So I hear this debate about blanket tariffs and all this stuff. But look, we're in a triage situation. Tariffs are an attempt to stop the bleeding from the hemorrhaging of jobs in America for the last 33 years. That's one thing Donald Trump has done. He's acknowledged the USMCA didn't go far enough. And so, you know, there's an urgency now to fix this problem. So here's my thing, Edgar. You know, you could, in theory, before the tariffs, I'm not, but you could before tariffs. But do you, you know, it did feel like he thought that he needed to do the Trump suck up routine a little bit there. And I don't really, I think I have some

theories. But what do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things, right? I mean, perhaps the most pertinent bit of context here is that Sean Fain really leaned in on the Democratic side of the ticket during the last presidential election. He spoke at the DNC, he wore a Trump is a scab, you know, vote Harris t-shirt on stage, you know, in primetime, beaming out to a bunch of people. That's the kind of thing that a guy like President Trump remembers, you know he he shot a particular shot and and now he is needing to kind of like uh scurry extra hard if he wants to get back in in trump's good books which obviously he wants to do obviously the other thing here is just that um you know why does he want to do that i mean i guess just uh you know i'm a little older than you edgar so i have i have memories of

the bush era union union leaders being hostile in hostile relationships with republican presidents or governors is not a new thing i mean scott walker i don't you know these guys never like seemed like the types to cower before this is just kind of the pre-surrender because they're afraid trump will punish them personally well there, there's a couple of things, right? I mean, like historically, Republicans have been pretty ideologically free market and therefore, you know, anti-tariff, anti-protectionism, not particularly concerned about, you know, whether, you know, free market economies and the prospering of the overall U.S. economy might have to mean like a new increased further shrinking in, you know, U.S. manufacturing,

U.S. auto manufacturing, stuff like that. But so there's basically two things to it. One is that Trump is a lot wishier, washier on the substance here, right? Like sometimes he talks like a total protectionist. Sometimes he talks like a total union guy. Sometimes he, he is totally sympathetic with the bosses, right? So, so there's the perception that he is changeable and malleable. And then there is also the correct perception that what he really cares about is the personal stuff that he, what he really cares about is whether you get on TV and butter him up or get on TV and thumb your nose at him. Right? So if you're Sean Fain, you know, dealing with George W. Bush or something like that, it almost doesn't matter. Like, like, like, like, of course, he's going to

oppose the policies that you want in certain respects. And it's not like you're making him any more or less likely to do that by buttering him up or being unkind to him, you know, on the boob tube. Trump is exactly the opposite, right? Trump could kind of go a lot of ways on a lot of these things. And there's basically no quicker, better way to get to his heart than, you know, appearing on a show that he's watching because, you know, TV is all in Trump's mind. And look, I mean, like Sean Fain, his goal, his prerogative in his role is not like stewarding the broader American economy, right? I mean, he wants to see a thumb put on the scale in favor of U.S. auto workers, in favor of people who are manufacturing. And I guess he has assessed that one way to do that is these massive protectionist tariffs. I don't know if that's accurate. I don't know if that's actually true, that's going to redound to the benefit of the auto worker. I know you want to talk a little

bit about that, but I guess that's, you know, that's kind of the calculation he's making right now. Yeah, I think it's untrue. And so we're going to get to the news item here. And then I have some theories on the politics of this too. But so what I alluded to at the top, United Auto Workers leaders, that's Fain is the head of the UAW, say they were blindsided by the announcement of layoffs at the Cleveland Cliffs Dearborn Works, a plant that supplies steel for the auto industry. It's the largest steel provided to the auto industry. The steel tariffs on Canada had already been put in place. We added another round of auto tariffs this week.

It is worth noting that the steel tariffs led to a spike in price and cost for components and materials. This is some just basic economics for folks. An increase in price is going to lead to a decrease in demand. It's going to slow down the demand for factory operations. Is there a one-to-one correlation here? TBD on all of the details of that. But it's pretty clear at this point, and there's been a lot of evidence that Trump tariff threats, the Trump tariff show, the actual tariffs that have been put in place have had certain repercussions on certain industries.

And the largest steel provider to the auto industry would be one, at least in the short term. Now, maybe the Sean Faines of the world would say, well, we're going to start making all the steel here now, and we're going to bring steel plants back to Pittsburgh. Like, okay, maybe in like 2034, and it takes a long time to build a new fucking steel plant. So to me, I think there's a pretty clear correlation here.

But what say you, free market Andrew? I mean, look, look, I mean, yeah, free market Andrew, that's me, right? The bottom line here is that tariffs are always going to create a certain amount of economic chaos, and they're always going to create a certain amount of economic inefficiency, right? You're trying to pursue a specific benefit, and you're going to bake in the fact that there are going to be costs that outweigh that benefit. But what you hope, if you are a tariffs guy, is that those costs are kind of diffuse enough that the market can kind of just absorb them and that it doesn't really hurt people and that the benefit, while

smaller economically, smaller in terms of raw numbers, is targeted in a way that is useful, politically useful for a constituency that you support or just, you know, useful on there's a moral case, you know, like like these these people have been, you know, the economy has been kicking manufacturers, you know, in the in the nuts for too long. And, you know, we're going to throw him a bone or whatever. The problem here for Trump is that he does not see things that way. He does not see tariffs as like, you know, introducing inefficiencies in order to achieve a targeted result. He just sees them as pure upside. And so like, it's always his move. He's just going to slap on more and more and more like he sees a

problem. We'll throw a tariff on it. He sees a problem, throw a tariff on it. And it spirals, because you create some problems with your first tariff. Then you address those problems. You're like, well, we'll just we'll put a tariff on that one, too. And then that creates further problems downstream. Well, you know, my favorite thing to address that kind of problem, that's a tariff. And it's just, you know, eventually the whole thing just collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, right? It just, in terms of massively higher prices for everybody on a bunch of things people want to buy until he yanks them off. So like, we're right in the middle of this vicious cycle. It's not clear how we get off of

it. Uh, and yeah, and, and,. And yeah, and he really only has the one thing in his toolkit to address any of this stuff. All right. I've teased everybody. Here's my unifying theory of all this and why these union guys have just totally just kicked themselves in the nuts here. I think you're correct that Fain feels like the need that he needs to performatively suck up to Trump because whatever, that the conventional wisdom he thinks he can get something out of trump that way uh okay i think there's another factor at play though a lot of his members were for trump a lot of these union guys are for trump um they were for trump mostly for cultural reasons and and cultural shift in the country some of them were there for economic reasons. They feel like Trump cared about them more than the Democrats did or whatever.

They felt like Trump was going to right the wrongs of the past and bring back the glory days or whatever. But even again, that's kind of cultural in a sense. And so they've bought in to the idea that Trump does have some magical power as a businessman to like help them economically and that Trump's agenda, Trump's tariff agenda must be good. And so Fain has to find a way to like keep his members happy, right? And to go along with some Trump thing. It's not going to be the mass deportations, you know?

And so, like, you kind of sell yourself. Okay, well, let's see. This is what the guys wanted. This is what the guys wanted. Trump's going to, you know, bring manufacturing back. The tariffs are part of it. We're going to go along. Here, let's play a little clip from another news item.

The UAW, which represents workers at the Tonawanda GM propulsion, Hamburg Ford stamping, and Lockport GM Plants, is now officially supporting tariffs as a powerful tool to undo injustice of anti-worker trade deals, and they are glad to see an American president be aggressive to end a free trade disaster dropped like a bomb on the working class. Okay, once again, like here are these union guys like saying

that oh the trump trump tariffs are a port important part of the agenda of the economic plan to bring back jobs here but here's the thing trump doesn't have a fucking plan to bring back jobs there is no plan it's all smoke and mirrors it's all fake and they've all bought into the snake oil. And there's going to be real consequences to it. So I'm not happy about it. I'm not gleeful that people are going to lose their jobs. Some people might have lost their jobs anyway. There's some of these jobs that in the globalized world just aren't probably going to be happening in America regardless.

That's unfortunate. That's just the nature of economic stuff. Like there aren't as many people aren't as many horse jockeys as there used to be, you know, because we don't have as many we don't we don't use horses nearly as much like that sucks. But anyway, Andrew, what do you make of that? What do you think you make of the bottom up argument? Yeah, well, I mean, there's obviously something to that. There's been something to that for a while, you know, there was already something to that when Sean Fain was appearing on stage at the DNC and making his argument basically to his members like, look, Trump has had an opportunity to do this before. He was president before the the the auto manufacturing industry didn't come roaring back under Trump 1.0. Right now, it's a little complicated because in some respects he was making like a Trump is a crypto free marketer critique at that point in time.

He was he was going after, you know, the fact that Trump let them keep making a bunch of a bunch of cars down in Mexico and stuff like that and didn't didn't work harder to to, you know, snarl those economic lines and make that more costly for everybody involved. And so now, like, I don't think it has to be all that complicated from the point of view of this particular guy, where he's like, look, this is a policy that is targeted to protect my particular sector, right? It's car manufacturers. They are the one group who disproportionately stand to benefit from auto tariffs, auto import tariffs, right? It's like, in theory, this is one thing that is going to keep us from a kind of long, slow slide into basically obsolescence as an industry. And basically, then he's just hoping that it will kind of stop there, right? Like there will not be additional tariffs later that they are the ones left holding the bag for, or different kinds of economic policies that are, or just rising prices that kind of swamp the wage increases or whatever for these guys.

I mean, he's basically making a bet that ultimately, yeah, there's going to be more inefficiency. There's going to be more chaos. There's going to be worse economic outcomes for most people. But maybe, maybe it will shake out such that the people that I am particularly responsible for, these auto workers, will come out ahead. And I think that's, I mean, you're right about all that other stuff being in the background. But as far as this particular policy, I think it's as simple as that. Yeah, makes sense.

All right, last thing on the politics of this. We had on the FY pod, my Gen Z pod, we had on a real leftist at the Bulwark. We get some complaints. We don't have real leftists on. You know, Bernie types. Jessica Burbank. I thought she was great. Misguided in some policies, but thought she was great. And so people can go watch that if they want.

But I thought it was interesting. She floated Fain as like the type of leader that she would like, you know, for the future of the Democratic Party? If I could just pick out of anyone, it would be someone like Sean Fain, someone like Dan Osborne, someone who's not afraid to stand up to corporate power with a real understanding of labor in America. AOC, she has a lot of the populist ideas, but she has an appeal with liberals. So I think that's fine. But I don't see her as someone who like fundamentally understands what it's like to grow up very working class in America. Right. She kind of sells as that. But she went to one of the best high schools in the country.

You know, she was in the Hudson Valley. She wasn't in the Bronx and Queens her whole life. And so I think we need someone who understands like the real rough realities of America. If Sean Fain had a larger, larger aspirations, which which some people have floated him for as having as being a future Democratic leader, like this, this feels like not something that's Yeah, I will be interested to see where that goes. Because I can I can imagine him, you know, getting up to four years from now and basically making the case like, yeah, like if first of all, if he's even questioned about like the specifics of how he is, you know, how he was dealing with Trump very early

on, like, yeah, like I stuck up for my people because that was my job and it was the right thing to do. And now I'm trying to stick up for a new group of my people, which is all of you, you know, Democrats or Americans or people in my state or, you know, things like that. I can see him making that kind of pivot. I it's gross. Like it's it's gross. Like it's still gross. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I I guess I'm not necessarily sold on the notion that it's like going to going to absolutely like redound to the harm of his his future prospects all right we'll see tbd um sean fane i don't know i think it was i think it was a thumbs down for thumbs down for me to sean fane that's andrew agar i'm tim miller we'll see you soon peace