The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Autoworkers Strike: The Union's Rising Influence in America || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

If your kids need poster boards for an upcoming school project, you may want to visit the supply store before the autoworkers hit the picket lines. With a strike looming, let's break down the economic and political consequences.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/autoworkers-strike-the-unions-rising-influence-in-america

Hey everybody, Peter Zine here, coming to you from Above Spanish Square in New Orleans, and it is the 13th of September. And the big news, that is not a 747. That's kind of fun. The big news is when you see this tomorrow, we will be within hours of potential autoworkers strike, the first one of significance in decades, and potentially a very economically and especially politically consequential one. Let's start with the economics.

Manufacturing is not one of the huge sectors in the United States. We're much more of a services country. But manufacturing of automobiles is the single largest subcomponent. So the auto workers are threatening to strike if they don't get their way, which could take the largest section of manufacturing offline, which would have massive economic ramifications. If they were to strike for as little as three weeks, it would be more than enough to throw the United States into a recession from the quarter.

And considering that this quarter, we're probably going to see economic growth north of five. which is almost unheard of for an advanced country, the economic impact obviously would be huge. The impact on specific types of automotive could be particularly bad. A lot of American automakers are attempting to launch new EV lines, and this was supposed to be the year that all of it hit the market, and this would just stop it in its tracks. So I can't tell you whether the strike is going to happen. They're asking for more than a one-third increase in pay, but the damage they could do the economy would be immense.

So kind of even odds there. But in terms of, wow, there's some sort of party going over there because, of course, it's New Orleans, and it doesn't matter that it's only Wednesday. Anyway, let's talk politics now. For the last several decades, unions have been part of the Democratic Coalition, and they've kind of been the economic core of that coalition,

the people within the coalition who can do math, if that's an easier way to think of it. However, they feel fairly put, pun. Under Clinton, the Democrats shifted to the right on economic issues, especially on issues such as globalization, which led to a steady decline in union membership. And as NAFTA took hold, a lot of union jobs vanished into Mexico. And as manufacturing then expanded in value-added terms in the United States, most of the new jobs in manufacturing and auto went to places that were not union states, most notably Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and especially Texas.

So when you're looking at what's been happening with trade and with the reshoring of trade, unions really haven't benefited from about at all. And that's part of the reason why unions are no longer really functionally part of the Democratic coalition. Donald Trump was very effective at bringing them over to his side during his term. Joe Biden has been partially successful in bringing them back, but it's best to think of them as swing voters right now. And this is something we're just going to have to get used to. the fact that the unions are becoming more of a linchpin in the American political process, and not just because they're in the wind right now, but it's a lot of votes. In the world we're evolving into, in the country the United States is evolving into,

there are not enough workers. The boomers are the largest generation we've ever had. The extras that are replacing them at the top of the pyramid of worker skills to have a lower work for participation rate. And the new generation coming in are the zoomers, and they're the smallest generation we've ever had. So we're looking at a significant reduction in the availability of labor writ large in the system. And in that sort of environment, you would expect organized labor or just labor in general to have more and more pricing power and more political power.

And that's before you consider that the problems in East Asia and the problems in Western Europe suggest that if the Americans still want stuff, autos or otherwise, we're going to have to double the size of the industrial plant. That's going to take a lot of workers. That's going to take a lot of blue-collar workers, exactly the source. of workers that are more likely to unionize than not. So what we're going through today, what we're likely to be going through the next few weeks as these negotiations drag on, don't think of it as aberration.

This is now part and parcel of the American economic and political experience, and whichever party of the unions ultimately fall in are going to have a significant increase in their overall hold on American life. The end.