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VS. TRUMP’S FACTORY FANTASY: THE MIDDLE CLASS WON’T RISE WITHOUT
UNIONS. FULL STOP.  
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Thom Hartmann
April 9, 2025
The Hartmann Report
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_ Manufacturing jobs alone didn’t build postwar prosperity —
organized labor did. And Trump is killing it... _

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Donald Trump is selling his economic chaos with a simple story:

“In the years 1945-1981, before Reagan and Clinton (and pretty much
all of both parties) embraced ‘free trade’ neoliberalism, a single
worker in an American factory could buy a house, take a nice vacation
every year, get a new car every two or three years, put his kids
through college, and retire with a comfortable pension. All because we
made things in America.

“When the Free Trade era began, it took 90,000 factories and 40
million high-paying jobs with it to China and other low-wage
countries, which kicked off the immiseration of the middle class. To
get back to that prosperity, all we need to do is use tariffs to force
manufacturing back to the US.”

IT’S A STORY THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE TO THOSE WHO’D LIVED
THROUGH THAT “GOLDEN AGE OF MANUFACTURING” ERA, AND THE YOUNGER
WORKERS WHO SEE IT PORTRAYED IN MOVIES AND ON TV OR HEAR THE STORIES
FROM THEIR GRANDPARENTS. BUT IT OVERLOOKS ONE MASSIVE REALITY: IT
WASN’T THE FACTORIES THAT CREATED THE MIDDLE CLASS, IT WAS THE
UNIONS.

Factories were a major feature of countries that went through
industrialization between the Civil War era and World War II. But only
occasionally did a factory in a community produce a middle class; more
often factory workers endured brutal conditions, violent bosses, and
were paid crap wages.

Alcoholism was so rampant in these miserable factories that wives
across the nation rose up in 1920 and demanded prohibition; their
pressure was so great that they succeeded in forcing Congress to amend
the Constitution that year to outlaw booze altogether.

THAT ROUGHLY SEVENTY-FIVE-YEAR PERIOD CAME TO A CLOSE — AND THE
EXPLOSION OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS BEGAN — WHEN PRESIDENT
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT PUSHED THE WAGNER ACT, ALSO KNOWN AS THE
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT, THROUGH CONGRESS IN 1935, LEGALIZING
UNIONS.

A decade later, with the end of WWII, employers were forced to embrace
unions, high pay, and good benefits because they had to compete with
each other for laborers to work in their factories. That period, from
the late 1940s through the late 1970s, produced the vast and resilient
middle class that Trump touts and American workers long to return to.

It’s a coincidence — albeit an intentional one — that the
offshoring of our factories happened around the same time (1981-2020)
as the collapse of union density. Both were the result of Reagan,
Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama embracing Free Trade Neoliberalism
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REAGAN FIRST MADE THE ARGUMENT THAT WE NEEDED TO THROW THE DOORS OPEN
TO THE WORLD’S MANUFACTURERS SO AMERICANS COULD ENJOY CHEAP GOODS
MADE IN LOW-WAGE COUNTRIES. HE ADDED THAT “UNION BOSSES” WERE
PREDATORY LEECHES WHO’D ATTACHED THEMSELVES TO WORKERS’ BACKS AND,
TO “FREE” WORKERS FROM THESE CORRUPT MEN, HE DECLARED WAR ON
UNIONS.

The Supreme Court fell into Republican hands in the 1970s and went
along with Reagan, gutting union rights in decision after decision
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decades.

AND PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON JOINED IN, TELLING AMERICANS THAT BLUE
COLLAR JOBS WERE A RELIC OF THE PAST AND WE COULD AFFORD TO MOVE PAST
THEM AND THE UNIONS THAT REPRESENTED THEM. IN 1998, FOR EXAMPLE, HE
GAVE A SPEECH ARGUING:

“We are moving from an industrial age built on gears and sweat to an
information age built on ideas and creativity.”

He added in another speech that labor unions should accommodate
employers who want to freeze wages and benefits as competition for
workers waned with our growing population and the loss of so many
factories:

“To succeed in the global economy, we need a new spirit of
cooperation between labor and management.”

THE RESULT WAS EASY TO SEE: WHEN REAGAN CAME INTO OFFICE IN 1981,
ABOUT A THIRD OF AMERICAN WORKERS WERE UNION MEMBERS, MEANING THAT
ROUGHLY TWO-THIRDS OF WORKERS HAD THE BENEFITS AND WAGES UNIONS HAD
NEGOTIATED BECAUSE THEY SET THE LOCAL WAGE AND BENEFIT FLOORS.

BUT BY THE END OF THE FIRST TRUMP PRESIDENCY, PRIVATE SECTOR UNION
MEMBERSHIP HAD FALLEN TO A PATHETIC 5.9%,
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ONLY AROUND 11% OF US PRIVATE SECTOR WORKERS HAD ACCESS TO THE WAGES
AND BENEFITS EARLIER GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS HAD ENJOYED.

It’s thus no wonder that we slipped from two-thirds of us being
solidly in the middle class when Reagan came into office down to
fewer than 47% of us
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While Democrats repudiated Clinton’s neoliberalism with the Biden
presidency, openly embracing unions (Biden was the first American
president to walk a picket line), Republicans still stand emphatically
opposed to unions and unionization.

WHICH IS WHY TRUMP’S SIREN SONG OF REINDUSTRIALIZATION WON’T DO
ANYTHING TO BRING BACK THE MIDDLE CLASS, UNLESS IT’S ACCOMPANIED BY
A REVIVAL OF THE UNION MOVEMENT.

But instead of supporting labor, he’s put Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an
openly anti-union former Republican congresswoman, in charge of the
Labor Department. And she makes no bones about her opposition to what
she calls “forced unionism” (_aka _union shops),
instead supporting
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state-based right-to-work-for-less laws that gut union membership:

“The right to work is a fundamental tenet of labor laws, where
states have a right to choose if they want to be a right-to-work
state, and that should be protected. … Forced unionism is not
something we should support.”

THE SIMPLE REALITY IS THAT BRINGING MANUFACTURING BACK TO AMERICA
WITHOUT ACCOMPANYING IT WITH INTENSE UNIONIZATION WON’T RAISE WAGES
AT ALL. IT’S WHY HONDA WORKERS IN ALABAMA AND INDIANA MAKE LESS THAN
DO UNIONIZED MACDONALDS WORKERS DO IN DENMARK
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ALSO GET SIX WEEKS OF ANNUAL PAID VACATION, FREE HEALTHCARE, AND FREE
COLLEGE).

The apparent real goal for Trump, as Senator Chris Murphy points out
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forcing country after country and industry after industry to come kiss
his ass and beg for exceptions to his tariffs. That, in turn, helps
him accomplish his goal of becoming an absolute dictator and
destroying our democracy.

As Senator Murphy said:

“It’s not economic policy, it’s not trade policy. It’s a
political weapon designed to collapse our democracy. … You have to
understand that everything Donald Trump
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service of staying in power forever — either him or his family or
his handpicked successors. He’s trying to destroy our democracy.”

IN OTHER WORDS, TRADE POLICY THIS AIN’T. IT’S A POWER PLAY AND
LITTLE ELSE.

There are strong arguments to be made for bringing manufacturing back
to America, as I point out in _The Hidden History of Neoliberalism:
How Reaganism Gutted America
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They include national security concerns (we can’t build a battleship
without parts from China); the reality that manufacturing is the
fastest way to increase the overall wealth of a nation (as Adam Smith
pointed out in _Wealth of Nations_); and safety for American
consumers (particularly with regard to pharmaceuticals, cosmetics,
toys, and processed foods).

BUT TRUMP’S STRATEGY — WHICH IS FALSELY BEING SOLD AS A SOLUTION
TO CRAPPY WAGES AND BENEFITS — WILL ONLY INCREASE THE NUMBER OF
WORKERS (AND KIDS) TOILING IN SWEATSHOPS AND LOW-WAGE FACTORIES.

Trump’s vision of America’s economic rebirth is a hollow echo of a
time that never truly existed — at least not without the force of
organized labor behind it. He talks tariffs and smokestacks, but
appoints anti-union ideologues to dismantle the very structures that
once gave those jobs dignity and power.

You can build factories on every corner of the country, but if you do
it without unions, you’re not rebuilding the middle class —
you’re building sweatshops with American flags on the roofs.

THIS IS THE REAL FANTASY: THAT WE CAN SEPARATE PROSPERITY FROM WORKER
POWER.

The truth is as stark as it is simple — _the middle class won’t
rise without unions_. No matter how loudly Trump sells his dream,
it’s strong unions and high levels of unionization of our workforce
that could make it real.

And Republicans will never go along with that.

* Middle class jobs
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* Labor Unions
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* Tariffs
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