There was intense speculation ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary in Michigan, but the actual results left two of the most important questions unclear. I wonder how many “uncommitted” voters angry at President Biden’s approach to the Gaza war will abstain in November, but Donald Trump will surely support Benjamin Netanyahu much more than Biden? And how many blue-collar workers will support Trump, mistakenly believing he is on their side?
But what we can at least say with certainty is that Trump is not and has never been pro-worker, but Biden is.
Of course, that’s not how President Trump communicates. In September, during the auto workers strike, President Trump addressed workers at a rally. non-union A Michigan auto parts factory declared when he took office that he had saved the auto industry, which was “prostrate and dying.” By contrast, the day before, Mr. Biden joined union workers on the picket line.
But this is purely a self-aggrandizing illusion. When President Trump took office, the auto industry had already regained much of the ground it lost during the Great Recession. This recovery was made possible because the Obama-Biden administration bailed out major auto companies in 2009. At the time, many Republicans vehemently opposed the relief package.
What about Trump personally? He flipped, initially supporting the bailout, but years later siding with the right wing of the Republican Party in denouncing it, saying, “Frankly, we could have bankrupted the auto industry and let it rebuild.” It should be,” he said. He has previously floated the idea of automakers moving production out of Michigan to lower-wage locations and eventually exiting the state, but added, “They want the jobs back even if the wages are lower.” That’s because I think so.” For those who don’t understand what I mean here, he was effectively suggesting that the autoworkers union be destroyed so that workers would be forced to accept pay cuts. Populism!
After taking office, Mr. Trump, who campaigned as a different kind of Republican, governed almost as a standard conservative. His pledge to rebuild America’s infrastructure drew pushback from Republicans in Congress but became a running joke. His greatest legislative accomplishment was tax cuts that greatly benefited businesses and high-income Americans. His attempt at health care “reform” would water down Obamacare without an effective alternative, leaving millions of Americans without health insurance coverage.
President Trump departed from Republican tradition by imposing steep tariffs on imported goods in an effort to revive manufacturing. But by imposing tariffs on industrial raw materials such as steel and aluminum and raising their prices, President Trump has made U.S. manufacturing, particularly auto production, less competitive and likely destroyed net jobs.
Importantly, there is nothing to suggest that Mr. Trump and those around him learned anything from the experience. The Trump campaign in particular appears to still believe that tariffs are being paid by foreigners, when in fact they are costing American workers and consumers. All signs point to Trump’s second term imposing even more egregious tariffs than his first.
Despite these circumstances, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, our country’s economy was close to full employment. But this largely reflects the fact that Congressional Republicans, who slowed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis by reining in government spending, suddenly loosened the purse strings after Trump took office.
How does it compare to Biden’s record? Yes, he led the explosion in inflation, but so did other developed world leaders, making it pretty clear that pandemic-related disruptions, not policy, were to blame. And although there have been some bumps along the way, inflation has subsided. Some economists argue that high unemployment would be necessary in the absence of high unemployment.
On the policy front, Mr. Biden has made a major break with Mr. Trump’s golf-course conservatism. He delivered on infrastructure. He enacted his two major pieces of legislation that promoted manufacturing. One focused on semiconductors and his other focused on green energy. Manufacturing employment has fully recovered from the coronavirus shock. Investment in manufacturing increased rapidly.
I don’t know how many Americans know about these policy initiatives. Or how many people realize that the Biden era was actually good for blue-collar wages? Overall, wage growth has kept pace well with inflation, with wage growth being fastest for low-wage workers. As a result, most workers’ wages, adjusted for inflation, are higher than they were before the pandemic and are actually above pre-pandemic trends.
In short, there’s a reason why the United Auto Workers supported Biden, but many of its members will vote for Trump anyway, imagining that Trump is on their side.
But Trump is not a populist, he’s a poser. When it came to making actual policy decisions as opposed to speeches, he essentially governed as Mitch McConnell with tariffs. Biden, on the other hand, has indeed pursued pro-worker policies, perhaps more so than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and has led significant reductions in inequality.
How many people will vote based on this reality? I’m sure you’ll find out.