Former President Donald Trump is warning America’s auto workers that President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda will outsource their jobs to China as the United Auto Workers (UAW) goes on strike against General Motors (GM), Ford, and Stellantis.
As Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney details, nearly 13,000 UAW members have started striking against three automakers as contract negotiations have yet to deliver assurances that Biden’s rapid push for Electric Vehicles (EVs) will not jeopardize their wages and jobs.
“The Biden administration has been pushing policies to electrify most new vehicles within a decade or so,” Carney writes. “That rush toward electric vehicles will mean a rapid decline in payrolls for autoworkers—even as the automakers enjoy Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.”
Trump, in an interview with CNBC, aligned himself with auto workers and warned them that the Biden administration, paired with UAW leadership, is not only not stopping China from gaining economic dominance over the EV industry but actively working to hand the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) full control of EV supply chains.
“The auto workers will not have any jobs … because all of these cars are going to be made in China. The electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China,” Trump said:
“The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump,” the Republican presidential frontrunner added. [Emphasis added]
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Trump specifically criticized UAW president Shawn Fain. “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China. That’s what’s happening,” Trump said. [Emphasis added]
The remarks come as auto workers out of Indiana told Politico they are fed up with Biden and his administration’s seemingly absent role in defending their jobs and wages.
“I don’t know what he’s done,” one auto worker said of Biden:
“Ask him. I don’t think he knows what he’s done. Seriously. I’m not trying to be mean.” Quirk wasn’t freelancing: Fain and the union haven’t yet endorsed Biden’s reelection, throwing into doubt Biden’s standing in autoworker-heavy communities like his. [Emphasis added]
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“They’re all full of shit,” Butler said. “We haven’t had a president in there for years, with the exception of Trump, that was really for the people, all the way back to the Reagan days.” [Emphasis added]
“Historically, man, if you didn’t vote Democrat years ago, and you were in the union, sometimes you got your ass kicked,” he said. “Democrats were for the working people. That shit has changed. I’m telling you what, the Democratic Party was not what it was 20, 30 years ago.” [Emphasis added]
Another auto worker called Biden “terrible” and said he “can’t remember his own name.”
Trump is among few Republicans defending auto workers against Biden’s green energy agenda, even as Breitbart News has reported that the rapid EV push without first establishing United States-based supply chains runs the risk of eliminating millions of American jobs.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is one of the lone voices alongside Trump.
This week, Vance accused the Biden administration of using the UAW negotiations to prop up his green energy agenda amid opposition from auto workers regarding key components.
“Bidenomics: We’ll ship 100 car factory jobs to China for every 10 we create in the United States,” Vance wrote on Twitter. “Then we’ll congratulate all the impoverished auto workers for being part of a ‘just transition.'”
Another lone voice on the issue is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who made clear this week that Republicans ought to be forcefully defending auto workers against Biden’s green agenda, which he said, like Trump, would end up outsourcing their jobs to China.
“Every dime the auto industry is spending on Joe Biden’s radical climate mandates should be spent on workers,” Hawley wrote on Twitter. “They deserve better wages, better hours, and a guarantee their jobs will be safe — not shipped off to China.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.