Trump calls for UAW leader to be "fired immediately"

• Avery Lotz  
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• AXIOS

JULY 19,2024

United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain in Washington, D.C., in March. Photo: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Former President Trump called for United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain to be "fired immediately" during his Thursday speech on the fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention.

The big picture: Fain endorsed President Biden in January after a months-long limbo over the administration's progressive push toward electric vehicles.

• In a historic move last year, Biden joined the picket line with the UAW and Fain, whom he appointed to his export council in May.
• Republican presidential nominee Trump also tried to win over auto workers, delivering a speech last year at an auto supplier in the suburban Macomb County, Michigan instead of attending the second GOP primary debate.

What he's saying: "Every single auto worker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump because we're going to bring back car manufacturing, and we're going to bring it back fast," Trump said Thursday.

• "Those plants are going to be built in the United States and our people are going to man those plants, and if they don't agree with us, we'll put a tariff of 100 to 200% on each car," he added.
• Trump said he would end the Biden administration's "electric vehicle mandate" on "day one."
• Trump claimed Fain should be fired and the UAW "ought to be ashamed" over "large factories … being built across the border in Mexico" and "by China" to sell cars with "no tax, no anything." He did not elaborate on how he believed the UAW was responsible for this.

The other side: The UAW wrote in a post to X that tagged Trump's account that the former president is "a scab and a billionaire and that's who he represents."

• They added: "We know which side we're on. Not his."
• Fain went further in a Friday statement to Axios, calling Trump "the billionaires' hero, mascot, and lapdog."
• "Don't get played by this scab billionaire. Stand up and fight for more," Fain said.