Biden joins the UAW strike

We knew it was coming and today is the day. President Biden becomes the first president in history to join a picket line.

President Joe Biden joined the United Auto Workers on their picket line Tuesday.

Take a listen to what he had to say. pic.twitter.com/bjJZcgG1jv

— The Associated Press (@AP) September 26, 2023

CNN notes a hint of political desperation is behind this stunt. Biden may be doing this is president but it’s definitely a campaign stop.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday joined members of the United Auto Workers in Michigan on the picket line, a historic moment for a modern president that comes amid a tense reelection race against a familiar foe.

The trip comes as Biden faces consistently low polling numbers on his handling of economic issues, and, back in Washington, the looming threat of a government shutdown this week. Both a prolonged strike and a shutdown could have economic consequences – something the White House is seeking to avoid as Biden tries to convince voters his economic policies are working. He’s also appearing in the battleground state of Michigan just one day before his chief political rival – whom he defeated in the 2020 presidential election – comes to the crucial swing state to make his own appeal to union workers.

Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary race, is scheduled to skip the second Republican debate to deliver a prime-time speech to an audience of current and former union members, including from the UAW, in Detroit on Wednesday. Trump has slammed the president for the visit, claiming Biden “had no intention” of walking the picket line until Trump said he would make a speech in Michigan.

The NY Times sees it as well:

Biden’s appearance also reflected the political reality of the moment. As he runs for a second term, he needs to win Rust Belt states like Michigan and can ill afford to alienate workers and their families by aligning himself with well-paid corporate executives. Biden’s likely opponent in the 2024 general election seems to have made a similar calculation: Donald Trump is due to address UAW workers in Michigan on Wednesday…

“For him to be going on a picket line is outrageous,” Steven Rattner, who headed former President Barack Obama’s auto industry task force, said in an interview. “There’s no precedent for it. The tradition of the president is to stay neutral in these things. I get the politics. The progressives all said, ‘We don’t want a mediator; we want an advocate.’ And he bowed to the progressives, and now he’s going out there to put his thumb on the scale. And it’s wrong.”

The more involved Biden gets, the greater the risk that he’ll wind up owning the outcome, for better or worse, people familiar with the White House’s thinking on the issue said. What’s more, he didn’t have much of a personal relationship with Fain, a progressive who doesn’t fit the mold of traditional labor bosses more familiar to Biden over his long career in politics.

The far left told Biden to dance and he did. Not the first time that has happened for this administration. The left is celebrating:

Today, for the first time in history, the President of the United States joined a picket line.

This is a major testament to the strength and resurgence of the labor movement. Let’s go!pic.twitter.com/bv3RAP2hkK

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) September 26, 2023

Biden on the picket line is legit blowing my mind.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 26, 2023

Never thought I’d see a White House chief of staff tweet this. Plus, it’s almost certainly true. Biden will be the first ever American president to join a picket line and the Biden NLRB has been an important supporter of organized labor. https://t.co/GNxiKxBZ1H

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 26, 2023

As I said last week, it’s easy to celebrate now because if anything goes wrong it will be a while before anyone sees it and by then this visit will have been a long while ago. Still, there is a risk that Biden could, to some extent, wind up owning the outcome. It’s a given that the UAW is going to get at least a 20% raise and some other goodies. But the more they get (a 35% raise, a 32-hour work week, etc.) the harder it’s going to be for these companies to make a profit going forward.

More to the point, in order to remain solvent automakers only really have one lever to pull and that’s to raise prices on cars. They’ll be forced to do that in a marketplace where the cost of owning a car has already jumped substantially over the past year. The Times published a story about that a few days ago:

It’s getting more expensive to own and operate a new car.

The average annual cost of ownership is up more than 13 percent from last year to more than $12,000, or just over $1,000 a month, according to the latest research from the automobile owners group AAA. Higher car prices and the surging costs of financing, insuring and maintaining a new car all contributed to the increase. The analysis also considered depreciation a cost even though it’s not paid out of pocket.

Where does that leave consumers who are already squeezed by rising gas prices, the higher costs for food and other goods, as well as increasing interest rates on their credit cards?…

According to an analysis from iSeeCars.com, an online car search site, buyers with a $23,000 budget could buy a three-year-old car in 2019, but the same amount is not enough for the average six-year-old car today.

So while Biden is standing with the union he’s definitely not standing with consumers who will be asked to pay even more for a new car. Here’s a bit more of Biden’s brief visit to the picket line.