Donald Trump gives speech to striking union workers 20 years after John Howard’s Tasmania move

Joe Biden delivers remarks in the parking lot outside the United Auto Workers Region 1 offices in Michigan. Picture: Getty Images

If Donald Trump knew Australian history, he would have John Howard on his mind this week.

If the former president’s planned visit to Detroit to speak to striking auto workers turns out anything like John Howard’s 2004 appearance before furious loggers in Tasmania, the imagery will be disastrous for President Joe Biden, against whom Mr Trump will likely be facing off for president next year.

In October 2004 Mr Howard took advantage of then Labor leader Mark Latham’s environmental policies, which could have threatened Forest Worker Union jobs in Tasmania, to cast himself as their economic saviour at rally in Launceston.

It was a political gamble, given the traditional animosity of unionised workers toward the Liberal Party, but it paid off: Howard was cheered, creating one of the iconic images of the 2004 election in which Howard won another term in a landslide.

John Howard greets a forestry worker after addressing a rally of 3,000 timber workers in Launceston in 2004. Picture: AAP.

Mr Trump has sniffed out a similar opportunity, promising last week to address hundreds of striking United Auto Workers union members at Clinton Township, in the northern suburbs of Detroit, at 8pm local time this Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

If he’s similarly well received by a group, white working class union workers, that has traditionally voted Democrat it will humiliate the embattled Mr Biden, who likes to say he’s the “most pro union president ever”.

It already has to some extent given Mr Trump’s plans have compelled the president to pay his own trip to striking workers on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), a day before Mr Trump arrives, which, based on recent public performances of the increasingly dotery 80-year old president, is far from guaranteed to be a success.

Around 13,000 United Auto Workers walked off the job on 16th September at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis plants in three states, and extended their strike to 38 locations in 20 states last Friday. They aren’t protesting only for better pay and conditions – although that’s a big part of it given three years of rampant inflation – but also to protect their jobs from the electric vehicle political juggernaut.

UAW members and workers at the Mopar Parts Center Line in Michigan rally after walking off their jobs. Picture: AFP.

Just as the Labor Party in 2004 threatened to legislate logger jobs out of existence, the Biden administration two decades later is doing the same with auto jobs, the economic backbone of a the swing state of Michigan which Trump narrowly won in 2016, then lost in 2020.

The Biden administration wants half of sales of new cars to be EVs by 2030. Democratic stronghold California has banned such sales entirely from 2035. These UAW workers, in theory supporters of the Democratic party by history and affiliation, can see the writing on the wall if policies purportedly to stop climate change continue apace.

Cars with internal combustion engines require a lot more workers to build than EVs, which are really chassis strapped to 500kg batteries with wheels. Moreover, foreign nations, especially China, have a comparative advantage in producing EV batteries, given their lower wages and proximity to the critical minerals the batteries require.

Trump must have been hoping the UAW workers were listening to his remarks at a campaign rally in South Carolina on Monday (Tuesday AEST), where he once again promised to impose a general tariff on imports and withdraw China’s ‘most favoured nation’ trading status.

“Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax. … Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China,” Mr Trump posted on social media last week, making an argument which, however exaggerated, will have significant appeal to union workers even if the UAW leadership has slammed Trump.

Donald Trump greets the crowd during a campaign rally in Summerville, South Carolina. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

In short, this could be the most decisive week of the 2024 presidential campaign so far, possibly entrenching Mr Trump as the most likely winner of the 2024 presidential contest if the differences in differences in the two political leaders’ reception by the auto workers is stark enough.

Nationally, the Biden administration is in a crisis as popular support for Mr Biden, even among Democrats, collapses at the same time as Mr Trump’s hold on the GOP, and his national standing, strengthens.

He’s even holding his Michigan speech on the same evening as the second official GOP debate takes place in California, betting, probably correctly, his remarks will attract more attention and consign the others to irrelevance.

The former president’s visit will come a few days after the Washington Post published a horror poll for Democrats, showing Mr Trump ahead of Mr Biden by 10 percentage points in a hypothetical presidential rematch.

Whatever the actual figures, political betting market PredictIt now gives Mr Trump a 41 per cent chance of winning the presidency next year (up from 31 per cent at the start of the month), compared with Mr Biden’s 42 per cent, the narrowest gap between the two so far.

“Under Biden, household incomes have been crushed by nearly $7,400 a year, under Trump incomes increased by more than $8,000 a year with no inflation,” the putative GOP leader said in South Carolina, referring to recent US Census bureau figures that showed real median households incomes had declined in 2022 for the third year in a row.

Mr Trump is betting economic factors will loom larger in voters’ minds than the legal arguments about obstruction of official proceedings and the proper storage of classified documents that dominate discussion in the New York Times and CNN.

“I think they are changing their tune also because nobody, nobody can want to vote for this guy [Biden] … maybe he makes it to the gate… but who are they going to put in, a guy from California that‘s destroyed that state? Or Maybe Kamala?” Mr Trump said, joking that the Vice president was less popular even than Mr Biden.

This week’s duelling attempts to win the support of auto workers should clarify whether the question is not whether Mr Trump becomes the GOP nominee but whether Mr Biden is allowed to run again.