DON GONYEA, HOST:
President Trump has repeatedly promised that he would save the U.S. auto industry and that aggressive tariffs would drive that industry revival. This weekend, a 25% tariff on imported automobile parts kicked in. Other potentially very large tariffs remain in the mix, though some are on-again and off-again. Autoworkers, meanwhile, are watching all of this closely. Many of them say tariffs will bring jobs back to the U.S., but even there, you find some skepticism about Trump's methods. Tariffs were a big topic at a rally Trump held outside Detroit this week. That's where I met Jimmy Suder and Bill Beers.
You're wearing autoworkers for Trump. Are you guys autoworkers?
BILL BEERS: Yes.
GONYEA: Both are big Trump fans. Both give the president high praise for his first hundred days. This is Beers.
BEERS: I mean, my main concern was immigration, so he's put a halt on immigration. That was the very first reason I voted for him - to close down our borders - and then the economy. And the tariffs is just part of his plan to boost the economy.
GONYEA: On that latter point, he's got full confidence in Trump. Beers is retired. Suder is still working. They believe the tariffs will be a boon to the car industry and other domestic manufacturing. And they're not worried about them driving up prices or causing layoffs or about the overall uncertainty created by Trump's strategy. Here's Suder.
JIMMY SUDER: Trump has his entire life built on negotiating. Let the man who's been doing it every day, all day for 50-plus years do it.
BEERS: I agree. I mean...
SUDER: Don't - standing on the outside looking in don't have no idea what he's doing.
BEERS: Everybody's trying to coach the game from the bleachers. Let the man we elected, the businessman we elected, do what he's wanting to do, and then we'll see what happens.
GONYEA: But even at a Trump rally like this, you do find some voices who will offer a word of caution. In line outside was Mike Senkowski. He's not an autoworker in the true sense of the word, someone who worked on the assembly line, but he spent his career as an engineer supporting and retooling local plants. He voted for Trump. He supports Trump, but he's been watching the markets closely, too.
MIKE SENKOWSKI: And I tell my buddies, like, oh, man, I certainly hope this works, you know, 'cause if it doesn't, that's a problem. You know, I have my faith in him. But maybe - the one thing that I wish he would have done a little different is the tariff thing and maybe not have been so heavy handed with it and using it as a - like a threat, almost.
GONYEA: Call him loyal but nervous - he says he thinks Trump's got about six months to show some real progress with the tariffs. The United Auto Workers Union endorsed Kamala Harris in last year's election, calling Trump out as a scab and anti-union. But UAW leadership has gotten behind the call for tariffs, even while still battling Trump on nearly everything else. This past week at UAW headquarters in Detroit, we sat down with two local union leaders. Luigi Gjokaj is the vice president of UAW Local 51 at the Mack Avenue truck plant. His auto-working roots stretch back to his grandfather who immigrated from Albania and worked the line at Chrysler while raising a family in the Detroit suburbs.
LUIGI GJOKAJ: Literally the American Dream, literally the American Dream, what he came to America for, and when I first got hired in, I still remember his voice telling me, good job, boy. You have a good job. You can raise family now and get married, and I don't have to worry about you no more.
GONYEA: JJ Jewell, meanwhile, represents about 300 UAW members at Ford's Sterling Axle plant. That's Local 228. He got his start on the assembly line a few years after the industry almost went belly-up during the financial crisis of 2008. The union agreed to concessions back then, with all new workers, like Jewell, getting a much lower hourly wage.
JJ JEWELL: Hired in at $15.78 an hour in 2012. Over - what was it? - 11 years at that point, it took me to make 22 an hour. Twenty-two fifty was the top out.
GONYEA: Neither is a Trump supporter. Jewell voted for Harris last year, while Gjokaj didn't vote for a presidential candidate. The union faults Democrats and Republicans alike for decades of bad trade deals that it says costs the U.S. millions of factory jobs. Both men do give Trump credit for taking action on trade, but they're skeptical whether his tariffs will produce the results he promises.
GJOKAJ: Made a lot of big promises, talking about tariffs and things like that - and I mean, they're bold. Are they going to work? There's potential there. I think some of the rhetoric lines up with what the UAW has been saying for 60 and 70 and 80 years - keep the product built in America with American workforce with a fair wage, fair benefits. But is that going to happen? We have yet to see - I have yet to see that.
GONYEA: I'm going to characterize you both as just broadly in favor of the concept of tariffs as a way to support American workers and UAW workers.
JEWELL: One tool, yes.
GONYEA: OK. That's one tool. That's right - one tool. So - but you understand why people are freaked out about them and why the markets have done what they've done. And how do we kind of - how do we reconcile these things?
JEWELL: So I will not have a master's degree-level analysis for you, but doing them in a calculated way, not being so heavy-handed or knee-jerk reaction or so excessive sometimes, where we're doing it in a very targeted manner that maximizes the benefits to our country and minimizes the fallout on our citizens.
GONYEA: Is it that he's got a good idea, but he's, like, doing it in such a Trumpian way?
JEWELL: Words out of my mouth - yes, I don't think he knows the phrase in moderation.
GONYEA: Is that a problem? I mean, is he blowing the opportunity to potentially use this tool that you think is so important by the way he's going about it?
JEWELL: On a broad level, yes, I believe so because there's still the chance that even doing it in such a Trumpian way, the long-term big picture, we're going to see some positive effects of insourcing, but that's years away. The amount of time to build a new U.S. factory or to retool one or to bring those jobs back in, dropping the hammer as heavy as you can still won't bring them back overnight. So we need to be able to maintain, you know, relations with other countries while giving the entire market a chance to correct. That takes time.
GJOKAJ: Touching on JJ's point, it's a tool, and I think it should be used in the way a surgeon would use a tool. We don't want to cut the whole arm off. We're not going for the artery, but we need to really slice away certain pieces of it to make sure we do this the right way 'cause if you do it the wrong way, you can blow this whole thing up overnight. And you got to be careful. But at the same time, you got to do - I don't want to say drastic things, but something needs to be done to correct the imbalances.
GONYEA: Jewell and Gjokaj say they are worried about just how long the tariff turbulence will last, and they're not the only ones. While they wait to see if Trump's roll of the dice does indeed bring auto jobs home, voters around the country are increasingly worried about how and what a trade war might cost them.
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