President Trump has made it no secret that he's courting the labor vote. He awkwardly hosted steelworkers at his press conference earlier this year after announcing steel tariffs, and his trade representative has worked closely with labor stalwarts like Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. He won the 2016 election with a greater share of union members voting red than anyone in at least a generation.
The latest overture to the working class came last month, when the administration dropped its remake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which is now called the United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, or USMCA. For the first time in a trade deal, a certain percentage of auto production will be required to be made by workers paid $16 an hour in order to take advantage of duty-free benefits. Unlike the original NAFTA, labor rights provisions are now in the core of the agreement, and Mexico has agreed to undertake reforms on collective bargaining.
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