Was Trump Pro or Anti unions?

[Anonymous]

Did he support them or was he against them?

I can't remember, and I'm currently boycotting Google.

He was pro Unions

He was anti Unions

[nightdrot]

Well, President Trump sort of split the difference.

Union leadership was generally anti-Trump and pro-Democrat. The unions having been aligned mostly with the Democrats since the 1930s and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. However, the blue collar lower middle class voters that make up the unions have been moving toward the GOP since the 1980s and the era of the so-called "Reagan Democrats."

Thus, in fact, union voters tilted toward President Trump and indeed, the reason why Mrs. Clinton lost the 2016 presidential race was because she had assumed that blue collar workers - read "union" - workers were in her pocket. Thus she ignored key states where they were a key voter bloc - particularly in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania and thus awoke to find that, contrary to expectations, she was not the President-elect.

The split between blue collar voters and unions was also revealed in the recent vote against the unionization - by an unexpectedly wide margin - of an Amazon facility in Alabama. This was a sharp defeat of the unions handed to them by their natural base membership.

In any case, in a strict reading of the question, Mr. Trump was not pro-union, though relationship was by no means as harsh as that between unions and the GOP of the 1970s, for example. However, in terms of his appeal, he reached in and took the blue collar vote that is the demographic heart and soul of the labor movement. Thus, in contrast to what had been the norm, the lower the income level, the more likely the voter went Republican. The higher the income level, the more likely a voter is to support the Democrats.

Of course, this is a wasting asset in demographic terms. As the economy shifts from a manufacturing/extractions base to a service/tech base, the blue collar population has been shrinking. Specifically by about 2% every four years since the 1990s. This also why the Democrats are now aligning with the white collar upper middle class suburban vote and Silicon Valley.

Union leadership - like many Democrats (see Mrs. Clinton above) has not fully caught up with the change in their own membership. Thus they still tilt Democrat and President Biden is making a full throated, though thus far unsuccessful, bid to regain the blue collar vote.

However, given the demographic changes and the cultural shift among the lower middle class - and give the condescension that the Democrats have started to show toward the lower middle class (see also "basket of deplorables," see also "clinging to guns and religion") - it is not likely to matter. The unions representing an increasingly weakened voter bloc overall and they will become increasingly less valuable in elections going forward.

Finally, in terms of policy, as the rising national debt illustrated even amidst the boom of the middle years of the Trump administration, he was careful not to cut popular programs with the lower middle class. Also, he supported programs like the Keystone pipeline and a tough stance on immigration that went down very well even with the union leadership.

Add it all up, and I voted pro-union, but it is a more complicated picture than such a simple dichotomy - pro or anti - suggests. That said, at the moment, Mr. Trump is a veritable hero among union voters and in that sense he may be safely called pro union.

[nightdrot]

P. S. Just to add, cards on the table, I am a Republican who was NOT a fan of Mr. Trump and did not even vote for him in 2016. (I voted "write-in.")

View what I wrote above through that prism.

[Leavesbound]

Trump was pro Trump. Generally, Republicans are anti union. Trump was a Republican. But he never let party affiliation get in the way of a good rally. If I recall he did visit some factories while president and I think he got support from at least some unions when he was running first time. But I don't recall his words about unions more recently.

[Anonymous]

I think it depended on if they supported him or not.

[andreasderjuengere]

I'd expect that unless someone briefed him, he does not know what a union is.
But if they don't vote for him, he's likely to say: ''very tremendous bad''.

[DarcRefractions]

What happens to Google?

I think republicans are anti-union.

[Anonymous]

Trump didn't care about unions one way or the other because he doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone but himself.