Donald Trump’s tariff wars are tearing apart the world, including the world of American politics. Trade is an issue that divides both major political parties. Although Trump has cowed most inside his own party, in early April seven Republican Senators, including former majority leader Mitch McConnell, cosponsored a bill put forth by the Democratic caucus to limit Trump’s power to unilaterally declare tariffs. Braver than their colleagues, these senators voiced the position traditionally held by their party—and which many more Trump-fearing Republicans still privately hold. Wall Street, the traditional backer of both political parties, is clearly nervous about the global trade conflict Trump has initiated. Again, fear is keeping many quiet, but the rockiness of the stock market and especially the bond market is itself an anonymous vote of no confidence in the president’s policy.

But just as many Republicans don’t like Trump’s protectionism, there are many Democrats conflicted by the way the president has stolen an issue that appeals to many blue-collar voters whom the party needs. This is especially true of swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump won these states in both 2016 and 2024 because their industries had been ravished by NAFTA and other trade agreements. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer became the visible emblem of this conflicted approach when she went to the White House this week to support the tariff policy. A now-iconic photo showed her seemingly hiding her face behind some folders, since she was clearly in an awkward position. In a controversial video, Pennsylvania Representative Chris DeLuzio argued against Trump’s chaotic trade policy—while also insisting that tariffs could be deployed more strategically to help American workers.

But no figure has become more of a lightning rod for the debate on the left about tariffs than Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers. Like DeLuzio, Fain offered a nuanced view of Trump’s actions: criticizing the president for implementing the policy in a “reckless” way, but welcoming the opportunity to change and challenge existing trade policy to help the working class.

To centrist Democrats, that apparently made Fain a traitor who has sold out to Trump. Fain’s harshest critics have come from the ranks of pundits from publications such as Vox and allied think tanks who are now rallying under the slogan of “abundance” (advocated in a new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson). Although presenting itself as new progressive vision for economic policies to rebuild America, functionally the abundance faction (which is heavily funded by tech money) amounts to a new iteration of neoliberalism promoting deregulation and business-friendly policies. In the current internal debate over the future of the Democratic Party, the abundance faction represents a reprise of the long-standing goal of centrists to make the party an avatar of the wealthy in alliance with the professional middle class, with the working class (both organized and unorganized) firmly restricted to the back seat.

This faction has reacted with fury to Fain’s insistence that tariffs, if properly deployed, can be used to rebuild a strong working class. Matthew Dylan of Vox posted, “Shawn Fain is betraying the working class…you can support the labor movement without supporting wreckers like him.” Ben Krauss, editorial assistant at the Slow Boring Newsletter, tweeted, “Call me crazy, but I think Democrats can be the party of the working class without ever listening to what Shawn Fain has to say about anything.” Armand Domalewski, cofounder of YIMBY Democrats for America, wrote, “when autoworker unions are cheering for Trump’s tariffs, they are absolutely acting as rent seekers. fucking over all American workers for the hopes of getting a few scraps for yourself from the Orange Man is scab behavior.”

These screams of outrage fall into a larger pattern described by Zephyr Teachout, who observed that “neoliberals are trying to highjack Democratic Party trade policy using these disastrous Trump tariffs as an excuse.”

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To appreciate just how far off-base Fain’s critics are, it’s worth listening to a long talk Fain delivered to union workers on April 10. The talk makes clear that far from being a Trump collaborator narrowly interested only in concerns of autoworkers, Fain is in fact an incisive, far-reaching critic of Trumpism. Fain presented a progressive alternative to the right that is far more serious or compelling than anything the mainstream Democrats have to offer.

Fain rightly lays blames the rise of Trump on free trade, which can be understood as the cornerstone of neoliberalism, in the prepared version of the speech provided by the UAW:

There is a direct line between the free trade disaster and the political chaos in this country.

Plant closures and mass layoffs resulted in intense pain and suffering and anger for hundreds of thousands of working families in our country.

And all that pain and anger had to go somewhere.

A lot of it went to Trump.

And now it’s being directed at immigrants. At transgender people. At higher education.

That is the wrong target.

The right target is corporate America.

And the sooner both parties understand this, the sooner our country will begin to deal with our real issues.

Fain pointed out that free trade has hurt workers outside of the United States as well: “In Mexico, they’ve seen their real wages cut in half since NAFTA passed.”

In an article critical of Fain for his economic nationalism in The American Prospect, labor writer Luis Feliz Leon acknowledges, “Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992, wages in Mexico and the U.S. have plummeted as bosses threatened to close plants.” Leon also notes that “when Fain says stronger enforcement is necessary when the USMCA [the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] is negotiated in 2026, he’s correct.”

Because he believes free trade has been a disaster, Fain wants to use tariffs as a tool to undo the damage. To do otherwise is to risk becoming defenders of the status quo, a position centrist Democrats may find comfortable, but which is unacceptable to a battered working class. The UAW is not supporting the Trump administration but rather negotiating with it, the same way the union negotiates with corporations. As Fain notes:

We don’t sit down to negotiate with corporate executives because we like them. Or because we trust them.

We focus on what we need as a working class, and what the hell it’s going to take to get it.

And we do that whether we’re sitting across from the friendliest CEO or the meanest Wall Street con artist.

Politics is just like contract negotiations. You win what you have the power to fight for.

Negotiations means working to push for the kind of tariffs the UAW want, which is not what Trump is pushing. Far from embracing Trump’s tariff wars, Fain offers a bracing critique: “We do NOT support the use of tariffs for political games about immigration or fentanyl. We do NOT support reckless, chaotic tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.”

Fain’s speech includes a blistering critique of the Trump administration:

We have seen the destruction of bargaining rights for a million federal workers. That is not good for the working class.

We have seen attacks on the National Labor Relations Board, including illegally firing a Board member leading to deadlock on workers’ cases. That is not good for the working class.

We have seen attacks planned on Social Security, on Medicare, on Medicaid, programs that millions of workers depend on. That is not good for the working class.

We have seen the absolute trampling of Constitutional rights.

We have seen the First Amendment go up in smoke at college campuses, with detentions, deportations, expulsions, and firings of people who dared to speak out against and protest against a war.

We have seen the right to due process disappear as working people are deported for no crime and no reason. That is not good for the working class.

Mahmoud Khalil, who has now been detained for over a month for protesting a war, is a former UAW member.

Grant Miner, the UAW President of Local 2710 at Columbia University, was expelled for protesting a war the day before bargaining was going to start.

Rumeysa Ozturk, an SEIU member at Tufts University, has been detained for writing an op-ed.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Sheet Metal apprentice in Maryland, was deported for no reason, no crime, to a prison in El Salvador.

We’ve seen the arbitrary and unlawful termination of hundreds of our members’ visas, which may lead to their unjust deportation.

It’s striking to contrast Fain’s unvarnished defense of deportees with a comment a centrist Democratic congressperson made anonymously to Axios, dismissing the deportation issue as the “soup du jour” and lamenting that “we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser.” This lawmaker advised Democrats to avoid the immigration issue until Trump started deporting American citizens.

Fain’s talk makes clear that he has a broad and far-reaching vision that places the working class at the center of politics as part of a program to improve life for all but the rich. Unlike centrist Democrats who want to preserve the status quo while tinkering with marginal reforms, Fain offers a politics that much more fully grapples with the crisis of our era—a crisis of which Trump is merely a particularly odious symptom.

Moreover, Fain’s political vision extends well beyond the tariff issue. He is far more forthright and unvarnished in criticizing Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian students and immigrants than many elected Democrats. Fain bluntly declared, “We will never give up our First Amendment rights to speak out, whether it’s against a genocide or for our union right.”

The calls to marginalize Fain are misguided—indeed, they are the opposite of what should happen. Fain has been a remarkably effective president of the UAW. He’d make an even better president of the USA.