To say the obvious — The victory in WS wasn’t simply a referendum on Musk.

The UAW wholeheartedly welcomed the announcement by Trump of a new trade policy. The union apparently believes Trump’s new tariff regime will re-shore auto production to the U.S., increase demand for U.S. made cars and trucks, and bring income and job security to autoworkers.

There is little doubt that the old neoliberal trade regime weakened the union and its bargaining power as jobs were off-shored, plants closed, and wages and benefits slashed. Auto centers, like Detroit, turned into a pale imitations of their former selves.

But the early reaction to Trump’s worldwide tariff war provides little evidence that it will bring back the union’s glory days, stretching from the end of World War II to the onset of stagflation in the early 70s.In fact, if the new tariff regime slows economic growth in the U.S. and worldwide, as many predict it will, autoworkers and U.S. workers generally could find themselves worse off than they are now.

Meanwhile, the union’s quick embrace of Trump’s tariff policies comes at the same time that the Trump administration, arguably fascistic, is increasingly meeting popular resistance to its anti people and undemocratic practices.

All of which raises a number of questions — why was the union so quick to find common ground with Trump? Why not wait to see how Trump’s tariff regime plays out? Why not join with others and make the mobilization of the union’s membership for this weekend’s demonstrations the immediate priority?

Someone closer to the union will have to answer these questions.

Part of the Trump coalition — the non MAGA part — is, not surprisingly, experiencing some buyer’s remorse.

Spirited and sizeable demonstration here in Kingston, NY. earlier today, the weather notwithstanding!

In Trump’s view, the U.S. led global order that structured international relations for more than a half century no longer serves, if it ever did, U.S. interests and deserves a quick burial. “Trump,” writes University of California political scientist Stephen Fish, “wants to return to a world in which great powers take what they’re capable of taking and everybody else just has to live with it. But more than that, he’s actually attempting to create a world that is dominated by autocracies because he wants to create autocracy in the United States and ally with autocracies abroad.”

That sounds about right, although I would add that Trump envisions the U.S. retaining its position as the dominant power in this new anti-democratic, authoritarian world order. The only major power that isn’t welcome into this “august” body is China. Unlike other major powers, China is considered a competitor, and a socialist one at that, to the imperial and hegemonic designs of the Trump administration and his billionaire backers.