During the American 2016 election, autoworkers came out in droves to put Donald Trump in office. For the first time in a long time, some rust belt states went total red and others were a blend of blue and red.
It was a crazy election with unexpected results. I remember watching the election coverage and seeing the rust belt states slowly give Trump points he needed for the electoral college and the seats he needed to stock the seats in congress and the senate in his favour.
When I got a summer job at the Fiat Chrysler Automobile (FCA) plant in Brampton, Ont., I had to provide proof of citizenship or permanent residency to qualify to work there. When I finally started my job I noticed there were two issues of automotive politics that came up time and again: there was a general dislike of NAFTA and a loathing for automation.
On my first training day in the factory, we were shown a parts refill line that had been taken over by automation, which came at a loss of four full-time positions.
Every single engine that goes into a Chrysler car that is built in Brampton comes from Mexico. Hundreds of tractor-trailers on a daily basis drive though the rust belt states, past closed down factories with engines made in Mexico that are destine for Canada.
The great American muscle car, the Dodge Demon is a creation of Mexican and Canadian industrial capacity. In short, large portions of American cars are not American. Without actually working in a car factory, it would have been hard to predict that the rust belt was going to line up to vote for Trump.
Unifor president Jerry Dias, who represents thousands of automotive workers in Canada, hopes that NAFTA fails. If it doesn’t he would like to see Mexican autoworkers wages raised to push automotive manufacturing northward.
Every single idea offered from union leaders to left and right-wing politicians to help the automotive industry will hurt it because all their ideas will make cars more expensive and people will buy used or buy an import.
Taxing a big company like FCA and redistributing that wealth to welfare recipients would make cars more expensive. Imposing bizarre tariffs that haven’t been seen since the 1950s would make cars more expensive. Asking that the wages of Mexican auto workers be raised to drive jobs northward will make cars more expensive and imposing a carbon tax to create subsidies for electric car investment will make cars more expensive, because only Tesla can turn a profit on them.
The list goes on forever about why cars are rising in price, and the answer isn’t employees going on strike and demanding more money, because that will make cars more expensive.
Right now the Brampton assembly plant is banking its future on the Alfa Romeo Giorgio platform being added to its lineup, the GM plant in Oshawa has temporarily laid some of its workers off and added a truck line to meet changing market demands, and Ford is fighting an uphill battle to send more production to Mexico to keep their car prices down.
The cost of living in first world nations is the monster that is scaring away stable employment and sending work overseas or down south. The British Leyland Automotive Group (BL) priced itself out of a job. By 1986, Tory leader and then-prime minster Margret Thatcher had disbanded the entire automotive conglomerate, which left thousands out of work.
She didn’t have a choice because the cars were of terrible quality and no one in England had the money to pay the workers the wages they wanted. Government regulations and taxes are bad. The less of those two things a company has to pay the cheaper they can provide the product they create, while being able to pay a good wage.
The attitude that Trump has towards to the automotive industry is no different than the attitude that the British Labour party had towards BL in the 1960s. That attitude is an outright denial of free market economics. I believe that NAFTA was a bad deal for Canada and the United States. However, enacting real polices that bring the cost of living and car prices down is better than waging war on the economy.
