With support for tariffs, UAW bureaucracy endorses Trump’s fascist plans for war on the working class
by Tom Hall
World Socialist Web Site, March 29, 2025
The United Auto Workers’ endorsement of Trump’s announced 25 percent tariffs on all automobiles manufactured outside the United States amounts to a declaration of support for a fascist-dominated government. It underscores the union bureaucracy’s unrelenting hostility to the working class in every country—and the urgent need for a rank-and-file rebellion against it through the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, as part of the broader struggle against dictatorship.
UAW President Shawn Fain issued a fawning statement “applauding” the Trump administration, which he claimed has “made history” by imposing tariffs that will supposedly create “thousands more jobs.” Fain’s claim that tariffs will benefit the working class is not only economically illiterate—it is a reactionary fantasy.
In a globally integrated industry, there is no such thing as an “American” or “Mexican” car. For decades, automobiles have been assembled through a vast, globe-spanning process of production. Tariffs will not protect workers; they will provoke retaliation, disrupt supply chains and trigger economic collapse and mass layoffs in the US and abroad. If not stopped by the working class, this path leads directly to trade war, as in the 1930s, and ultimately to world war.
The endorsement also reeks of hypocrisy. The UAW bureaucracy could not care less about the fate of autoworkers in the US or anywhere else. While it now claims that Trump is ending the “global race to the bottom,” it has spent the last 45 years collaborating with the corporations to destroy millions of auto jobs in the name of “competitiveness.”
Trump’s aim is not to protect “American” jobs but to prepare for imperialist war to dominate global markets and supply chains. His tariff policy goes hand in hand with open threats to annex Greenland, Panama and even Canada—plans drawn straight from the playbook of Hitler, whose annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland paved the way for World War II.
While the UAW stops short of saying it outright, the inescapable conclusion of Thursday’s statement is that the union bureaucracy would support the annexation of Canada and other countries.
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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/29/uhgq-m29.html
Which is where I’m at this morning, now. Thank you for the heads-up, UTUSN!
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