Trump Criticizes AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumka On Labor Day
According to CBS News, President Trump celebrated his second Labor Day as leader of the free world by criticizing AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka via Twitter.
Referring to a Fox News interview with Trumka that aired on Sunday, the President claimed that the leader of the nation’s largest federation of labor unions “represented his union poorly on television this weekend,” adding that he believes unions are doing “so poorly” because Trumka is a Democrat.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday over the weekend, Trumka claimed that Canada should still be included in the ongoing NAFTA negotiations, claiming that the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican economies are all “integrated.”
“It’s pretty hard to see how that would work without having Canada in the deal,” Trumka said, following Trump’s insistence that there is “no political necessity” for Canada to remain in the NAFTA agreement.
Permanently excluding Canada from the NAFTA agreement would certainly require congressional approval and would present a number of legal challenges that may not make it possible to simply cease trade negotiations with Canada. NAFTA talks with Canada are still expected to continue this week, however.
Referring to the trade deal that the President reportedly made with Mexico last week, Trumka noted, “If we can’t monitor it and enforce it effectively,” he said, “then the agreement will fail for workers and it will fail for the country.”
Throughout the duration of his interview on, Trumka also criticized the President’s decision to overturn several workplace regulations that aimed to protect workers, claiming that “the things that he’s done to hurt workers outpace what he’s done to help workers.”
While Trumka did acknowledge that the country’s unemployment rate is low and economic growth has increased to some degree, he also argued that workers are still struggling to get by. “Wages have been down since the first of the year. Gas prices have been up since the first of the year. So, overall, workers aren’t doing as well,” he said.
There is no political necessity to keep Canada in the new NAFTA deal. If we don’t make a fair deal for the U.S. after decades of abuse, Canada will be out. Congress should not interfere w/ these negotiations or I will simply terminate NAFTA entirely & we will be far better off…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2018
In his varied response to Trumka’s comments, President Trump also accused the AFL-CIO head of speaking against his own union workers and went on to tout his own perceived achievements, claiming that the average American worker “is doing better than ever before.”
“Our country is doing better than ever before with unemployment setting record lows,” Trump tweeted. “The U.S. has tremendous upside potential as we go about fixing some of the worst Trade Deals ever made by any country in the world. Big progress being made!”
