UAW President Backtracks on Trump Tariffs

After backing Democratic Kamala Harris’s candidacy in 2024, Shawn Fain shocked many observers by strongly supporting President Donald Trump’s tariffs. But the head of the United Auto Workers Union is now backing down. While he still backs tariffs targeting the auto industry he has dubbed Trump’s broader trade war “reckless.” Headlight.News has more.

While the United Auto Workers Union has long allied itself with the Democratic Party, there’s been a split over trade policies ever since former Pres. Bill Clinton enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement nearly three decades ago. That came into sharp relief in recent weeks when UAW Pres. Shawn Fain, a strong backer of Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign came out praising victor Donald Trump’s new tariff policy.

They’re a “tool,” Fain said during an appearance on Face the Nation. “They’re not the end-all solution. We have to fix the broken trade system.”

Now, however, with the Trump trade policies creating global turmoil and sending stock markets around the world into a tailspin, Fain appears to be backing down, describing the president’s broad tariff plans “reckless,” during an interview with National Public Radio.

Tariff Turmoil

Trump has long expressed interest in enacting broad tariffs which he claimed would help bring jobs back to the U.S. in the weeks after his January 20 inauguration, however, he largely focused on sanctions centered around the auto industry, and largely targeting Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trade partners.

On April 2, Trump delivered a shock, going significantly further then expected by announcing tariffs covering virtually all trade partners of the U.S.

That set off global chaos, stock markets around the world reporting record or near-record declines wiping out trillions of dollars of investments. In the U.S., most key indices continued tumbling Monday, though the tech-heavy NASDAQ did manage a 0.1% gain for the day.

Fain: Who cares about Wall Street

During his appearance on NPR, Fain largely dismissed the stock market decline, asserting that “half of Americans don’t even have stock.” (As NPR pointed out, the number having some direct or indirect investments is likely higher than 50%.).

“Sixty percent of Americans have no retirement savings,” he said.

“So when I hear all the crying about the stock market, this is just Wall Street,” said Fain. “They’re people that are already rich, and at the end of the day, most working class people are trying to survive right now. And it’s infuriating that our livelihoods have been stripped from us for decades and no one’s cared.”

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“Reckless”

Fain appeared to be trying to walk a fine line in his interview. While he called out the president’s “reckless” approach to tariffs, he continued to express support for more narrow trade sanctions specifically targeting the auto industry.

In that sense, he remained consistent with past views. Fain and other leaders of organized labor have viewed pacts like NAFTA and the more recent USMCA as destructive to American workers. He has opposed moves, in particular, outsourcing high-paying auto jobs to places like Mexico where workers may make less than 10% of their American counterparts.

“The point of tariffs is to eliminate the race to the bottom where we’re exploiting people.”

Tariffs could backfire

There’s growing concern that Trump’s tariffs will backfire, leading to a recession and lost jobs. Though there are some signs that manufacturers could expand U.S. auto assembly and part production in the coming years, there are also indications the sales gains of the last two years could collapse. After nudging 16 million vehicles in 2024, for the first time since the pandemic began, Telemetry Research now forecasts 2025 sales will fall by 1.8 million.

Stellantis, meanwhile, announced it will temporarily lay off 900 U.S. workers as a result of the tariffs and other job cuts could come, analysts warn, across the industry.

For his part, Fain dismissed such concerns and said automakers may wind up increasing employment as they expand U.S. production.

As for predictions of a coming recession, the UAW chief was equally dismissive. “Where was JPMorgan, all these people, when the companies were jacking up prices and price gouging the last three and four years?” he said. “Where was their outcry then? As long as the stock market’s doing good, that’s all they care about.”