John Jefferson
“You have proven yourself to be one of the best friends of working men and women in the United States.”
These are the words of Harold Daggett, the thuggish but charming chief of the International Longshoremen’s Association, to his most prominent supporter in American politics. The ILA Wednesday concluded an agreement with the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) to forestall a resumption of the union’s October strikes; while the terms were not publicized while members review the provisions, the six-year contract reportedly guarantees job growth for the union and takes complete port automation off the table, while allowing certain technical improvements.
You might expect that Daggett was addressing the self-christened “most pro-union president” and the actual sitting chief executive as of writing, Joe Biden. No—he was addressing the real-estate developer, reality television impresario, and once and future president, Donald J. Trump of the Republican Party.
And how! Daggett expanded,
President Trump clearly demonstrated his unwavering support for our ILA union and longshore workers with his statement “heard round the world” backing our position to protect American longshore jobs against the ravages of automated terminals. President Trump’s bold stance helped prevent a second coast wide strike at ports from e to Texas that would have occurred on January 15, 2024, if a tentative agreement was not reached.
We had previously highlighted the ILA–USMX showdown as one of the early tests of the Trump 2.0 political sensibility, with the core question of whether tech capital and workers, particularly blue-collar workers, could be fused into a durable coalition. If Daggett is to be believed, the labor side is happy; the tech side seems to be fine, too, with the villains of yesteryear coming around to the Trump way of thinking.
There are an infinite variety of ways to cut up the Trump phenomenon, or, at any rate, there are an infinity of columns to be written. (Journos have to get paid, too.) It’s fair to say that Trump’s mandate, such as it is, is to cultivate normality: no sudden economic disruptions, no more immigration madness, no more social radicalism, no wars. A port shutdown would have been a very bad start for the new administration’s economic stewardship. Challenges (as always and everywhere) re, but the tentative agreement is a good start.
The next real and concretely timed hurdle—immigration will be in large part manageable by unilateral executive action, and so is not much of a hurdle at all—will be extending the 2017 tax cuts while resisting calls from elements of the base to expand them. What looks like a possible sticky wicket should be met with measured appeals to the recent Covid inflation crisis. Ending the tax cut would encourage recession; increasing it would cause other sinister distortions. For the first time in a generation, concerns about debt, the budget, and monetary policy are at the forefront of people’s minds (including those who write the editorials for liberal papers and magazines). Trump seems well positioned to build a consensus on fiscal restraint and use it to guide the tax-cut extension through.
After that, the war in Ukraine, and then that in the Middle East; here we begin heretically to entertain doubts. We’ll wait to get rough until after the inauguration, though. Doesn’t Biden deserve his final week and a half of derision and abuse?
Whether Trump will be able to set a new baseline in American public life is the fundamental political question of the next four years. As things stand, with some light help from his new union goon friends, he appears well positioned—politically—to take the initiative on January 21. We hear troubling rumors about the transition, that the rank-and-file staffing is a usual Trumpian shambles. It would be tragic for such a promising start to stumble on a flubbed execution. It will be remembered as an enduring irony if the only Republican president since Nixon to be considered a friend of labor cannot get anyone to work for him.
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