‘They could bring work back in very short order’

WASHINGTON — United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain said Sunday that President Trump’s looming 25% tariff on foreign-made cars could swiftly boost American manufacturing jobs.

Fain, a prominent anti-Trump campaigner ahead of last year’s election, said that the levies could benefit workers and used remarkably similar language as the White House on how carmakers could onshore jobs.

“We have excess capacity” at manufacturing plants, Fain said, using near identical framing as the White House. “They could bring work back in very short order.”

“Tariffs are a tool in the toolbox to get these companies to do the right thing, and the intent behind it is to bring jobs back here, and, you know, invest in the American workers,” Fain said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Trump’s stiff auto tariffs are set to take effect Wednesday and could trigger upheaval in the car industry.

Wednesday is also the advertised launch date for Trump’s 25% tariffs on other Canadian and Mexican goods and his “reciprocal” tariffs on other major trading partners such as the European Union and Japan.

About half of vehicles sold in the US are foreign-made, mostly in Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Germany.

Fain wasn’t entirely uncritical of his longtime political foe — emphasizing that he wants union membership to grow as a result of a potential influx of auto jobs.

“It doesn’t do any good if they’re going to locate them in places and they’re not going to have the opportunity to have a union, you know. And so naturally, we have concerns,” the union boss said.

Former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s 2025 challenger, were closely aligned with the UAW — going so far as to snub non-unionized Tesla from a promotional electric vehicle showcase on the White House lawn.

Trump and Fain have exchanged insults publicly, with the president calling on auto-union members to oust Fain, who on Sunday offered critical words about other Trump actions, calling him “deplorable” for moving to strip federal workers of union eligibility.

The auto tariffs were announced last week, with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro stressing that they also would apply to car parts.

Canadian and Mexican car imports will be tariffed based on the percentage of parts that are US-made. If half of its parts are American, for example, the levy would be 12.5% rather than 25%.

“Half of the roughly 16 million cars, SUVs and light trucks Americans bought in 2024 were imports,” Navarro said last week. “Of the remaining 8 million units, more than half of these cars were assembled from foreign parts. So what that means is less than 25% of the cars sold in America contain US content on average. That stops right now with the Trump auto tariffs.”

The idea of a 25% tariff on cars was previously studied by the US International Trade Commission, which said in a report last year that “[a] new 25% tariff on U.S. imports from outside of North America would reduce vehicle imports by 73.9%, increase average prices of vehicles in the United States by 5.0%, and increase variable profits from domestic production by 5.2%”

That report did not assess the effect of tariffing Canadian and Mexican imports, meaning the impact may be even greater.

Trump has aggressively adopted tariffs during his second term after largely using the threat of tariffs during his first term to score trade reforms from other countries.

Earlier this month, Trump slapped an additional 25% tariff on China, citing fentanyl smuggling, and in Februar,y he imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, without exceptions for major importers that previously were in effect.

Trump has teased plans for tariffs on computer chips, copper, pharmaceuticals and other products — arguing it would boost the US economy, though critics say it could fuel inflation by making goods more expensive.