President Joe Biden belatedly announced plans to visit the striking United Auto Workers (UAW) union members in Michigan on Tuesday, just one day before former President Donald Trump is set to visit them.
“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” Biden posted online.
Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create.
It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 22, 2023
Biden’s announcement came days after Trump announced plans to visit the workers on Wednesday, the same night his Republican primary challengers will be on the debate stage for a second time.
Trump’s announcement that he would visit Michigan caused Democrats to panic, with one Democrat strategist telling Politico Trump’s move is “kinda genius.”
“Now if we announce we’re going, it looks like we’re just going because of Trump,” the strategist said. “We waited too long. That’s the challenge.”
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller called Biden’s planned visit a “cheap photo op” and said Biden is only visiting on Tuesday “because President Trump announced he is going on Wednesday.”
“If President Trump had said nothing, Biden would be giving UAW workers in Michigan ‘the East Palestine treatment,’” Miller said, referencing Biden’s six-month and counting absence from the city where a toxic chemical spill led to air and water contamination.
Miller also highlighted how Biden’s economic policies have harmed the striking autoworkers.
Miller said:
Biden is still hell-bent on destroying all of the auto jobs he’s purporting to care about. His visit on Tuesday is completely meaningless unless he withdraws his Insane EV Mandate and rebukes his Green New Deal, which Biden will never do because he’s beholden to the Radical Left Eco-Loons in California. Joe Biden cares more about his extremist liberal base than he does about auto workers in Michigan or anywhere else in the United States.
Joe Biden’s trip to Michigan is nothing more than a cheap photo op as he finds himself between a rock and a political hard place.
1) The only reason Biden is going to Michigan on Tuesday is because President Trump announced he is going on Wednesday. If President Trump had said…
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) September 22, 2023
Bidenflation and the president’s green electric vehicle (EV) agenda have fueled UAW’s decision to strike against the big three automakers, as Breitbart News has repeatedly noted.
“Look, this is actually the fault of Joe Biden because one of the things driving this strike is the fact that people’s wages have deteriorated so much,” Breitbart Economics Editor John Carney told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow this month. “Of course, the unions want to be paid more because they’ve seen their buying power go down. Their cost of living has skyrocketed. So, of course they need to make more money.”
As Carney further detailed in an article:
A better way of analyzing the raises, however, is to compare them to increases in the cost of living for UAW members. When the last contracts were negotiated in 2019, inflation was running below two percent. In the 12 months through August 2019, the consumer price index nationwide had increased 1.7 percent. In the Detroit-Flint area, it was up by even less: just 1.3 percent. Over the previous four years, the consumer price index for the Detroit region was up a total of 4.5 percent.
…
Once that’s added to a true-up for the excess cost-of-living increase over the past four years and the loss of the expected real wage increases, you can easily get to a reasonable economic justification for something in the neighborhood of a 30 percent wage increase.
UAW president Shawn Fain has also argued autoworkers are being “left behind” in the EV transition.
“When we talk about the EV transition, you’re talking about 20 percent of the powertrain workers in the Big Three stand to lose their jobs down the road if we go from [internal combustion] engines to battery power. And you can’t call this a just transition if you’re going to go from $32 an hour wages down to $16 an hour,” Fain said.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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