In Facebook livestream and Jacobin interview, UAW President Fain promotes economic …

UAW President Shawn Fain during his Facebook livestream, April 11, 2025 [Photo: United Auto Workers]United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain held a Facebook livestream event Thursday evening aimed at damage control over his embrace of Trump’s trade war measures.The tariffs, including 25 percent on “foreign” cars and auto parts, have produced mass layoffs in the auto industry, exposing Fain’s lie that trade war would benefit the working class. This includes 900 layoffs of Stellantis workers in Michigan and Indiana as a consequence of the idling of plants in Mexico and Canada which they supply. Another 1,000 workers at Stellantis Warren Truck in suburban Detroit are to be laid off Monday for one month and another 200 workers are being laid off at General Motors Factory Zero in Detroit.Fain’s comments were a study in sophistry and evasion. Even as he defended Trump’s trade war measures, he claimed to oppose the same administration’s sweeping attacks on democratic rights, including the seizure and threatened deportation of pro-Palestinian activist and legal US resident Mahmoud Khalil, a former UAW member.He declared, “We are not aligning everything we do with the Trump administration. We don’t align with any politician or president. We are negotiating with the
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