Michigan autoworkers wary of Trump's tariffs: 'Playing poker with people's lives'

Source: The Guardian

Sun 13 Apr 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 13 Apr 2025 07.01 EDT


The General Motors Flint Assembly plant is a hulking symbol of American auto industry might, a 5m-sq-ft factory stretching as far as the eye can see down Van Slyke Road, and it hums: three shifts almost daily crank out the Silverado truck, the automaker’s most popular product.

The plant weathered decades of industrial disinvestment in Flint, a blue-collar city of about 80,000 in mid-Michigan, the nation’s auto capital. Flint Assembly remains an economic cornerstone of a Rust belt region filled with working-class swing voters who helped propel Donald Trump to his second term. The president did well here in part because he promised an industrial revival that will regenerate towns like Flint. On the campaign trail he promised tariffs would achieve this goal.

This week the tariff war kicked into a higher gear. The reviews are mixed. Autoworkers, small business owners and residents here say tariffs could help Flint, but many aren’t comforted by what they characterized as Trump’s haphazard approach, higher prices on everyday goods and the prospect of middle-income folks becoming “collateral damage”.

“Trump is playing poker, but he’s playing poker with people’s lives at this point,” said Chad Fabbro, financial secretary of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 538 in Flint. Even the union is a house divided. The UAW president, Shawn Fain, supports tariffs, but Fabbro said many of the 5,000-strong rank and file at Flint Assembly see them as “bullshit”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/13/michigan-autoworkers-trump-tariffs-reactions