It is safe to say that President-elect Trump is not AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s favorite person. Trumka, the leader of the nation’s largest labor federation, has called the incoming president’s policies “racist” and “anti-worker” and he denounced him throughout the presidential election.
Nevertheless, he says he’s ready to work with him.
“While many of #PEOTUS @realDonaldTrump nominations signal an alarming anti-worker agenda, #trade is an area where gains seem possible,” Trumka tweeted Tuesday.
The tweet was representative of a slowly dawning realization by many on the Left: There may be substantial common ground between them and Trump, whose economic agenda overlaps with theirs in many ways.
That was the theme of a press conference held by several prominent liberal leaders including Trumka and members of Congress on Tuesday. They called on Trump to live up to his campaign rhetoric to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“We’d like to help him and his administration craft a new trade agreement that will result in rising wages and possibilities for peoples on all sides of the borders,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.
It is an awkward situation for many on the Left, who have openly worried that Trump may be stealing their economically populist issues. At the same time, they don’t want to lose the opportunity to make policy advances.
Others have warned not to expect much. Neil Sroka, spokesman for the Howard Dean-founded Democracy for America, called Trump a “serial liar” who is stocking his Cabinet with “right-wing ideologues.”
“He should be held to account for the things he promised in the campaign,” Sroka said. “That doesn’t mean you have to go to him hat in hand and saying, ‘How can we help?'”
Many on the Right are wary but optimistic in terms of what this could mean for the Republican Party. Trump’s success in heavily blue-collar states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio has made many think that the conservative economic message needs to be re-thought.
“There is a recognition that that we need to reach out more to those workers who have been left behind by the current economy,” said Republican strategist Ryan Williams.
A spokesman for Trump’s transition team could not be reached for comment.
Re-writing NAFTA would represent a major victory for the Left, which has long blamed the free-trade deal for businesses outsourcing to Mexico and South America. Such a victory would have been unlikely had the Democrats won in the fall. Altering NAFTA was never on President Obama’s agenda throughout his eight years in office. Had Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won, it is doubtful that she would have changed NAFTA either, since it was one of the signature policy achievements of husband Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Trump’s efforts to stop businesses such as Carrier and Ford from moving production out of the U.S. also have been applauded by the Left, if grudgingly. Trump’s efforts mark a stark contrast from President Obama, who mocked the idea that the companies could be cajoled into staying.
“He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer,” Obama told a Carrier worker at a June town hall event.
