Trade ministers from major global economies in the G20, or “Group of 20,” are gathering in Milwaukee this week for the G20 Trade Ministerial. They're meeting at the Pfister to discuss international trade rules, tariffs and other issues like food trade security and ending forced labor.
The spotlight on trade, and on Milwaukee, spurred labor and environmental advocates to gather downtown Wednesday. They demanded trade policies that they say will put the interests of people over corporations.
Protesters weren’t deterred by the light rain and a blanket of mist as they stood in solidarity with consumers, workers, farmers and the environment. They carried cardboard cutouts of headstones with the names of dozens of companies, like Master Lock, Cargill and American Motors Corporation. Someone dressed in a grim reaper costume walked back and forth, waving a scythe.
That’s because the companies, and their union jobs, have all left the Milwaukee area.
John Drew from the United Auto Workers, one of the largest and most influential labor unions in North America, says the departure of these and other employers wasn't inevitable.
He says it was the product of bad trade deals passed by politicians from the Republican and Democratic parties. Drew says it started with the passage of NAFTA in the early ‘90s.
"Trump's NAFTA 2.0, the USMCA [the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] is a continuation of that disaster. How could any political leader who claims to be looking out for American workers say it was a good idea to have a free trade deal with a country like Mexico where workers make 10% of what workers in the U.S. make?" he says.
Drew says we need to remember what manufacturing here was like in the 1970s. He says that’s when he was one of 10,000 U.A.W members building cars at the American Motors plant in Kenosha.
"The city of Milwaukee and the entire state of Wisconsin was a manufacturing powerhouse. Close to 30% of the workforce in Wisconsin worked in manufacturing. Forty-three percent of Black Milwaukeeans worked in manufacturing," he says.
Drew says the loss of those jobs had a big impact on the community. "The vast majority of those jobs were good jobs because they were union jobs. Unionized manufacturing workers made a living wage, had health care, and could retire with a pension."
Drew says he had no idea that four to five decades later, there would be no auto production in Wisconsin, and that all plants in the 30th Street Corridor in Milwaukee would be gone. "The AMC plant site in Milwaukee is now a Walmart where low-wage workers sell products made by lower-wage workers in other countries to low-income consumers in Milwaukee," he says.
Drew says today, 90% of the cars and trucks made in Mexico are exported to the U.S. and Canada. He says President Trump’s trade stance is only making things worse for people here.
"Donald Trump chose Milwaukee for the D20 to tell a lie that workers and farmers are better off because of his trade policies," argues Drew. "In fact, his chaotic, vindictive, corrupt, and illegal tariffs have done nothing to bring manufacturing back."
U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement when the meetings were scheduled that, "the Trump Administration looks forward to working with our G20 partners to establish a global trading order based on fair, reciprocal, and balanced trade," in their Milwaukee meetings.
President Trump argues that his tariff policies are helpful because he says other countries have “ripped off” the U.S. for decades. He argues tariffs are good for economic leverage, to bring money into the country, and to protect manufacturing in the United States. Trump says that people who criticize them are “weak and stupid.”
While Drew is critical of Trump’s policies, he says the worst thing the country could do would be to go back to the pre-Trump era of free trade. "We need a common-sense trade policy that puts workers, communities, and the environment first. Targeted and strategic tariffs could be one tool to level the playing field," he says.
Drew backs a proposal in the House that’s named the Fair Trade for Working Families Resolution, which he says calls for a worker-centered trade policy. Advocates of that policy have delivered a petition to the G20 trade ministers they say was signed by thousands.
The trade ministers will be in Milwaukee through Thursday, Oct. 1. The U.S. will host the G20 Summit in Miami this December.
