In the first two days of February, Donald Trump and Joe Biden addressed major trade unions, as the 2024 battle for this decisive constituency goes into high gear.

On February 1, President Trump addressed a Presidential roundtable hosted by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 1.3 million workers. In the press conference following the meeting, Trump stuck to a simple theme: his policies, which protect jobs, protect our borders, and hold down inflation, are good for working Americans. That appearance came after an earlier January meeting with Teamster President Sean O’Brien, which O’Brien described as "an in-depth and productive discussion on worker issues most important to the Teamsters Union." The Teamsters have yet to endorse a Presidential candidate.

The next day, February 2, Joe Biden crept into Michigan to meet with UAW President Shawn Fain and a handful of workers. Efforts by LaRouchePAC and others, including UAW members, to ascertain where Biden was going to be, were met with “nobody seems to know.” Biden’s photo op, which ended up at a UAW Training Center in Warren, MI, was a desperate effort to capitalize on the UAW endorsement which he had received from UAW President Shawn Fain a few days earlier.

There were only a couple of problems.

1. Fain admitted in a national interview that “a majority” of his members were going to vote for Donald Trump. (Not a surprise to us, since we have been organizing at auto plants for months.)
2. Members of the Arab and Muslim American community in Michigan managed to find out where Biden was meeting and staged a vigorous protest of hundreds of people outside the event, carrying signs “Abandon Biden.” They were met with a substantial riot police presence.

So, two key Democratic constituencies in Michigan are splitting from the Democratic Party. Donald Trump’s message to auto workers resonates strongly. They know what free trade did to their jobs and industry and know that Trump will fight for what he calls “patriotic protectionism.” But, even more, they know that the Democratic-pushed  mandates for electric vehicles will wipe out jobs in the tens of thousands, since it is already happening. Within weeks of winning wage gains in last year’s UAW strike, thousands of workers found themselves laid off because of declining EV sales, just as Trump, who has pledged to stop the mandates, had warned.

The situation with the Michigan Arab/Muslim community is more complicated. There is no widespread support for Donald Trump, in part due to lack of knowledge of the full intentions of Trump’s “Abraham Accords” for the region. But the fury directed at Biden, whose policies (or lack of policies) have opened the door to the destruction of Gaza, is off the charts. 

An effort by the Biden campaign to meet with leaders in Dearborn, Michigan, which is the center of the largest Arab/Muslim community in the country, was canceled by the community leaders. One Democratic State Representative, who is also House majority floor leader, said that he would "not allow our communities to be utilized for political expediency...Since October 7th, I have received ZERO correspondence from the White House, the DNC, or MDP leadership about the concerns from our community on the ongoing genocide unfolding in Gaza."

Even stronger was the statement of the publisher of the Arab American News, who did hold a private meeting with a Biden campaign representative in order to convey his "disgust." "You have to understand the community you are visiting ― it consists of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinians and Yemenis, and these are the countries that Joe Biden is bombing."