Former President Donald Trump is courting one of the Democratic Party's most important voting blocs.
Trump is hoping to appeal to union voters, especially in the Midwestern states he lost in 2020, and has asked for an endorsement from the United Auto Workers.
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"I think you'd better endorse Trump because I'm going to grow your business, and they are destroying your business," he said in a video released last week.
#Agenda47: Rescuing America’s Auto Industry from Joe Biden’s Disastrous Job-Killing Policies pic.twitter.com/l3W8oCTRCp
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) July 20, 2023
He accused President Joe Biden of "waging war on the U.S. auto industry" with electric vehicle mandates and green energy promises that only produce "electric cars for rich people" while decimating factories.
The voting patterns of union workers will be one of the most closely watched developments in the 2024 presidential contest.
Trump got into office in part by flipping the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where the UAW is based. Biden then flipped them back by touting his "Scranton Joe" roots and embracing some of Trump's policies in 2020. Should he be the GOP nominee, The Donald will again try to court the blue-collar union voters that have been trending Republican in recent elections.
Former Michigan Democratic Rep. and UAW employee Andy Levin says it won't work this time.
"My reaction is two words," he said. "Dream on."
Levin, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, acknowledges Trump made policy innovations that helped him peel off would-be Democratic voters. Notably, Trump promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States and implemented a series of trade tariffs while in office that were designed to boost domestic factory employment.
However, Biden has mostly kept Trump's tariffs in place and also boasts about signing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law. Those moves, Levin predicts, will keep enough union workers voting Democratic to keep the blue wall intact next year.
The president has already picked up endorsements from more than a dozen unions and likes to call himself the most pro-union president in history. Labor groups donated millions of dollars to his 2020 campaign and are ready to help him this time around as well.
But the votes of actual union members do not always line up neatly with those of union leadership.
According to Edison research, Biden won 57% of union households nationwide in 2020 compared to 40% for Trump. That was twice the margin of Hillary Clinton's union edge in 2016.
Biden, who visits the Rust Belt frequently, is already promising that manufacturing work is at risk if he doesn't win the White House next year.
“Let me tell you something," he said at a rally with union members in Pennsylvania on June 17. "If Republicans come after what I've done, when they come back to try to get rid of all these clean energy investments and they try to stop the plan on infrastructure, when they try to do these things, guess what? They’re coming for your jobs."
The UAW union is holding out its endorsement over concerns that electric vehicles will lead to fewer jobs in auto plants, leading Trump to claim he would fight harder for auto workers than Biden. Union spokesman Jim McNeill did not comment on the Trump video when contacted by the Washington Examiner, saying, "We don't have anything new on that front."
The odds of an endorsement are slim to none, however, as UAW President Shawn Fain has said another Trump presidency would be a "disaster."
Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, said the disconnect between union leadership and union dollars versus the votes of rank-and-file members has long been discussed.
"You think of union members as people without a four-year college degree, which is now a pretty Republican group," he said. "It's pretty natural for Trump to appeal to that segment of the electorate."
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Still, Trump is courting the UAW largely because most other unions have already endorsed a Democrat well ahead of the next election.
"It's almost like Trump has to try to find a union that's upset with the president," Kondik said. "In terms of labor leadership, Biden seems to be doing pretty well. It's just that there's always been a disconnect between labor leadership and their own rank and file."