Hey GM Picketers: Blame Trump
Trump has voiced his support for the GM strikers, but his policies are partially to blame for their dire straits in the first place
As the standoff between General Motors and its employees enters day five, the political class has waded into the morass — none more notable than President Donald Trump.
Trump’s support for the employees and their union, United Auto Workers, should come as no surprise. The strike, which has grown to nearly 50,000 employees and is spread across nine states primarily in the middle of the country, presents the president with the opportunity to curry favor among voters in those industrial regions. And sure enough, Trump has seized on the labor spat — at the heart of which is a dispute over the use of temporary workers and the closure of plants and factories — as a rallying cry for his America-first agenda.
“I don’t want General Motors to be building plants outside of this country,” he told reporters this week. “As you know, they built many plants in China and Mexico, and I don’t like that at all.”
What Trump isn’t saying, of course, is that his policies are partially to blame for the strike in the first place.
To the surprise of no one, Trump has mostly…
