President Trump launched a Labor Day attack at AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, who a day earlier said the commander-in-chief has hurt US workers more than he’s helped them.
“Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, represented his union poorly on television this weekend,” Trump tweeted minutes after wishing the nation a “Happy Labor Day!”
“Some of the things he said were so against the working men and women of our country, and the success of the U.S. itself, that it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. A Dem!” he added.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Trumka said about Trump: “Unfortunately, to date, the things that he has done to hurt workers outpace what he’s done to help workers.
“He hasn’t come up with an infrastructure program that could put a lot of us back to work. He overturned a regulation that would deny 5 million overtime that they would’ve had. He overturned some health and safety regulations that will hurt us on the job.”
He added: “We said when [Trump] was elected that when he did something good for workers, we’d support him. When he did something bad for workers, we’d oppose him.”
On Monday, Trump tweeted that “our country is doing better than ever before with unemployment setting record lows. 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!”
When Fox News host Chris Wallace mentioned to Trumka on Sunday that unemployment is down to 3.9 percent and employment numbers have held steady, the AFL-CIO chief said that while those numbers are positive, Trump is still falling short.
“Those are good, but wages have been down since the first of the year, and gas prices have been up since the first of the year,” Trumka said. “So workers really aren’t doing that well.”
Trumka also criticized Trump’s recently announced trade agreement with Mexico, saying that any effort by the White House to retool the North American Free Trade Agreement also should include Canada.
“We’re anxious to move forward with it and anxious to have all three countries involved, because NAFTA has had a devastating effect on the working people of this country for the last 25 years,” he told Wallace.
Last week, Trump announced he was proceeding with plans to abandon NAFTA and was working out the details of a new bilateral trade agreement with Mexico.
Talks between Team Trump and Canadian leaders collapsed Friday, the same day the Toronto Star published off-the-record comments the president made in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Trump told Bloomberg Thursday that he would not make any compromises in the talks with Canada — but that he could not say that publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal,” the Toronto Star reported.
“Wow, I made OFF THE RECORD COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED,” Trump tweeted Friday.
The next day, he added: “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.”