UAW Statement on Tariffs and Renegotiating U.S. Trade Agreements

The UAW supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy. We do not support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy. We are willing to support the Trump Administration’s use of tariffs to stop plant closures and curb the power of corporations that pit US workers against workers in other countries. But so far, Trump’s anti-worker policy at home, including dissolving collective bargaining agreements and gutting the National Labor Relations Board, leaves American workers facing worsening wages and working conditions even while the administration takes aggressive tariff action.

If Trump is serious about bringing back good blue-collar jobs destroyed by NAFTA, the USMCA, and the WTO, he should go a step further and immediately seek to renegotiate our broken trade deals. The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays. We need to stop plant closures, bring back American jobs, and stop the global race to the bottom immediately. Any tariff action must be followed with a renegotiation of the USMCA, and a full review of the corporate trade regime that has devastated the American and global working class.