Trump and Biden: Who’s Really on the Workers’ Side? | Business

There was much speculation ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary in Michigan, but the actual results did not clarify two of the most important questions: How many “unaffiliated” voters, disaffected by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war on the Gaza Strip, will stay away in November? , even though Donald Trump will surely support Benjamin Netanyahu more than Biden? And how many workers will support Trump in the false belief that he is on their side?

But at least we can say for sure that Trump is never in his favor and never will be…

There was much speculation ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary in Michigan, but the actual results did not clarify two of the most important questions: How many “unaffiliated” voters, disaffected by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war on the Gaza Strip, will stay away in November? , even though Donald Trump will surely support Benjamin Netanyahu more than Biden? And how many workers will support Trump in the false belief that he is on their side?

But at least we can say with certainty that Trump is not and never has been pro-worker, while Biden is.

Naturally, Trump doesn’t tell the story this way. In September, during an auto workers’ strike, Trump addressed workers at an auto parts factory Non-union of Michigan, declared that he had saved an automobile industry that was “prostrate, dying” when he took office. Biden, on the other hand, joined the picket lines of unionized workers the day before.

However, Trump is pure fantasy of personal growth. By the time he entered the White House, the auto industry had regained much of the ground lost during the Great Depression. This recovery was possible because the Obama-Biden administration intervened in 2009 to save major companies in the sector. At the time, many Republicans strongly opposed that bailout.

And Trump personally? He first supported the bailout and years later sided with the Republican right who condemned it, saying: “They (the auto industry) could have gone bankrupt and rebuilt themselves.” He once floated the idea of ​​automakers moving production out of Michigan to lower-wage locations and then returning over time “because those people want their jobs back, even if there are fewer of them.” If you don’t understand what he meant, he was actually hinting at breaking the auto unions to force workers to take pay cuts. Populism!

Once in office, Trump, who campaigned as a different kind of Republican, governed primarily as a traditional conservative. His promises to rebuild America’s infrastructure—rejected by Republicans in Congress—became a running joke. His biggest legislative achievement was a tax cut that was a huge boon to businesses and high-income Americans. His attempt to “reform” the health system will be destroyed Obamacare Without any viable option, millions of Americans would have lost their health insurance coverage.

Trump departed from the orthodoxy of the Republican Party by imposing significant tariffs on imports with the supposed goal of restoring the manufacturing sector. But by imposing tariffs on industrial inputs like steel and aluminum, raising their prices, Trump has made American factories – and auto factories in particular – less competitive, and likely destroyed net jobs.

Essentially, there is nothing to suggest that Trump and those around him learned anything from that experience. In particular, the Trump team continues to believe that the tariffs are paid by foreigners, when in fact the burden falls on American workers and consumers. All indications are that the second Trump term will be characterized by tariff increases, just as the first was misconceived.

Despite everything, our economy was operating near full employment on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic. But this mainly reflects the fact that Republicans in Congress, who delayed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis by restricting government spending, suddenly loosened the purse strings after Trump took office.

How does Biden’s balance compare? True, inflation erupted during his tenure, but so did leaders of other advanced economies, making it abundantly clear that epidemiological constraints, not politics, were to blame. And some economists claimed that without high unemployment, inflation is easing, despite some bumps in the road.

When it comes to politics, Biden has clearly broken with Trump’s golf course conservatism. It has delivered in terms of infrastructure. He has signed two major bills into law to boost manufacturing, one focused on semiconductors and another on green energy. Factory employment has fully recovered from the Covid crisis; Investment in the sector has skyrocketed.

I don’t know how many Americans have heard of this policy initiative. Or how many realize that the Biden era has been really good for blue-collar wages. Overall, wage growth has been above inflation, and faster for the lowest-paid workers. As a result, inflation-adjusted wages for most workers are higher than pre-Covid and are actually above the pre-pandemic trend.

In short, there’s a reason the United Automobile Workers union supports Biden, even though many of its members would vote for Trump anyway, assuming he’s on their side.

But Trump is not a populist. It is fake. When he did real politics instead of speeches, he basically governed like Mitch McConnell, but with tariffs. By contrast, Biden actually had Franklin D. Has adopted more, arguably, programs to benefit workers and significantly reduce inequality than any president since Roosevelt.

How many of us would vote based on this reality? I guess we’ll find out.

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