Trump stood up for America’s workers before. As rank-and-file Teamsters, we believe he will do it again

The Democrat Party was built on the backs of the labor movement. For years, we have fought arm-in-arm with Democrats at the picket line and the ballot box to not only ensure fair treatment, pay and conditions for union members, but for all Americans – securing 40-hour weeks, weekends, Social Security, Medicare and health insurance. These benefits are now understood as commonsense protections, and America’s workers take these hard-fought rights for granted. 

But for years, the Democrat Party has taken us for granted – claiming to support labor unions while refusing to wholeheartedly back legislation that would strengthen protections for America’s workers.  

They will not acknowledge their role in contributing to the most pressing problems facing working families – massive costs that have made it harder to put food on the table, unlimited illegal immigration resulting in more jobs going to foreign-born workers and bad trade deals that have shipped our manufacturing sectors to China. 

Nonetheless, unions across America continue to back Democrats and are providing them support – financial and otherwise – while most of these politicians prove themselves to be more of the same corporate-aligned elites that they claim to despise. 

Former President Trump departs a campaign event at the Central Wisconsin Airport on Sept. 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Not anymore. 

For the first time since 1996, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – which started as a team driver association merger in 1903 and is now the largest, most diverse union in the country – has declined to endorse a candidate for president after years of supporting Democrats. And as rank-and-file Teamsters, we support Donald Trump. 

We understand why our leadership has declined to endorse either candidate. Neither is perfect. But Vice President Kamala Harris has time and again paid lip service to America’s working class while simultaneously using her campaign to prop up California millionaires and billionaires over everyday people. With Trump, we know that he will stand up for working men and women because he has done it before. 

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Trump ended the disastrous NAFTA agreement, the worst trade deal ever made, and negotiated the USMCA – which Harris opposed. He forced the government to buy American and hire American to help stop the outsourcing of jobs overseas. He worked with foreign leaders to reform the World Trade Organization to benefit our workers. He negotiated trade agreements with countries like Japan and South Korea, as well as nations in the European Union, to resolve years of unfair trading practices and increase made-in-America exports. 

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Those policies worked. Under Trump, America’s overall trade deficit decreased – including with China, which was cut back by $73 billion. Wages soared at the fastest rate in a decade. In his first three years, Trump created 419,000 new manufacturing jobs and 740,000 new construction jobs. America was respected again because Trump took the fight straight to China, and our workers were better off. 

As vice president, Harris inherited Trump’s trade surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion trade deficit, with more than a third of that total due to unbalanced trade with China. Despite Harris’s sudden election year embrace of tariffs, she and Biden granted exemptions to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs – holding back our iron, steel, and ferroalloy manufacturing sector from fully recovering after the pandemic. 

And Harris still wants to cancel student loan debt – forcing half of the population, those of us without college degrees, to foot the bill for $321 billion in others’ education bills and that disproportionately benefits the wealthy. That is on top of her tax-and-spend policies that have lowered real wages and increased energy costs for American families – raising the price of groceries, rent, and electricity by over 21%, 22% and 30%, and costing every middle-class household over $30,000 since 2021. 

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Trump ended the disastrous NAFTA agreement, the worst trade deal ever made, and negotiated the USMCA – which Harris opposed. He forced the government to buy American and hire American to help stop the outsourcing of jobs overseas. 

In his second term, Trump has promised to implement a national reshoring plan to create millions of new jobs and make our country totally independent from China. He will end Harris’s electric vehicle mandate that has destroyed manufacturing jobs in middle America. He will impose a tariff on all foreign goods across the board and pass a reciprocal trade act to ensure that the United States is matching any tariff that other countries force upon our industries and workers. 

Workers can’t trust Kamala Harris because she has had three years to enforce the Trump-era policies that she now claims to support. For us, the choice is clear. Donald Trump stood up for the working men and women of America once, and when he says that he will have our backs in a second term, we believe him. Other workers should, too. 

The authors are Michigan Teamsters Dale Cadle and Curtis Cull, Wisconsin Teamster Greg Joswick, Pennsylvania Teamster John McGillen and Arizona Teamster Joe Shea.