It’s May Day and Donald Trump is visiting the Midwest to rewrite his record on labor and the economy.
However, Trump’s record is clear: He was awful to workers before he was president, he was a disaster for workers during his four years in office, and he’d continue to present a dangerous threat to middle and working-class households if allowed to occupy the White House once again.
American Bridge 21st Century’s website, TrumpHatesWorkers.com, contains hundreds of pages of research on Trump’s record.
Get the truth on Trump’s anti-worker and anti-union record:
- Trump proposed moving auto production out of Michigan to communities where wages were lower in order to exploit workers.
- Trump was a supporter of Scott Walker’s Right to Work policies and his damaging anti-union fight in Wisconsin.
- Trump’s Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia spent his career arguing on behalf of large corporations on labor disputes, not workers.
- Trump appointed known anti-labor figure, Peter Robb, as general counsel to the NLRB.
- Before the Trump Administration, Robb “spent most of his career representing employers.”
- Trump appointed a majority of the members of the NLRB who limited who could be in a collective bargaining unit, allowed businesses to ban workers from using company email for union and organizing purposes, lowered the standard to remove an existing union, and made it easier for employers to classify workers as independent contractors.
- Trump supported outsourcing in public comments in 2005, saying the practice was “not always a terrible thing.”
- The Labor Department certified 184,888 jobs being offshored during the first 3.5 years of the Trump Administration.
- Trump is desperate to slash the Social Security and Medicare benefits that union workers rely on.
Donald Trump’s record of letting down our nation’s union workers includes wrecking the economy with a harmful trade war and being the only president to leave office with fewer American jobs than when he was sworn in.
Get the truth on Trump’s economy-wrecking record:
- Trump often touts his 2017 tax plan — the same tax plan that was written to favor the richest Americans and wealthy corporations.
- Trump also claimed that he has a record of playing “hardball with China.” The truth is Trump waged a poorly executed trade war with China during his time in office, costing Americans approximately 75,000 manufacturing jobs.
- By the end of Trump’s first term, the steel industry reportedly employed close to 2,000 fewer workers than it did when he was sworn into office.
- American companies paid the price for Trump’s trade war. Between 2018 and 2020, Trump’s tariffs cost American companies an estimated $46 billion. Trump’s tariffs forced American importers to drive up the price of major home appliances, furniture, auto parts, home-building, luggage, imported alcohol, and U.S. whiskey distillers to cover the cost of pricey imports.
- Trump is a huge proponent of outsourcing jobs and saw an increased amount of jobs outsourced to other countries during his presidency.
- According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a record 20.5 million people abruptly lost their jobs in April 2020 as businesses closed or severely reduced operations to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 – something the Trump administration failed to do.
- A decade of employment gains vanished in a single month under Trump, nearly double the jobs lost during the entire 2007-2009 financial crisis. Trump’s failure to address the pandemic sent U.S. unemployment up to 14.7 percent in April 2020.
Published: May 1, 2024 | Last Modified: May 8, 2024