In his most recent blog at Huffington Post, Leo Gerard, the International Steelworkers president and a Sudbury native, took a swipe at presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump for comments the Donald made during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on June 28.
The address made Gerard hopping mad.
"Donald Trump stomped into my backyard just days before July 4 and claimed to be a steelworker," the veteran union leader wrote in blog posted on July 4. "That’s right. The billionaire, whose manicured little hands routinely slip into lambskin golf gloves but never once donned heavy-duty work mitts, actually claimed to be a steelworker."
In his speech at a scrap metal processing plant in Monessen, Pennsylvania, Trump both criticized globalization and attempted to distance himself from those businesses and industries that profit from globalization at the expense of domestic jobs.
"Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization, moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas," Trump said. "Globalization has made the financial elite, who donate to politicians, very, very wealthy. I used to be one of them."
Gerard criticized Trump — who spent a good portion of his Pennsylvania speech attacking international trade agreements — for aligning himself with the American manufacturing sector and the workers who have suffered as it has shrunk over the decades.
"Even as he condemns NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, Donald Trump is taking full personal financial advantage of all of those trade deals," Gerard wrote. "He wants to build a wall, but he makes his suits in Mexico. He vilifies China, but that’s where he manufactures his neckties. He produces other Trump Collection products in slave-wage, high-pollution countries like Vietnam and Indonesia and Bangladesh.
"He could have manufactured them in America. He could have created American jobs. It’s not impossible ... But he chose to produce the vast majority of Trump merchandise overseas with foreign workers."
Going back to May, Gerard has used his weekly blogs at Huffington Post exclusively to attack Trump.
