Former President Donald Trump thinks that building a BMW X3 in Spartanburg, South Carolina is as easy as putting a jigsaw puzzle together. While speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, the Republican presidential nominee said that assembling a car is so easy that “we could have our child do it.” It might go without saying, but let’s say it anyway: Trump’s oversimplification of car production in incredibly demeaning to the physically demanding jobs of American autoworkers.
Trump continued his years-long rant about trade and tariffs. He talks about trade like someone speaking about how they would manage their favorite football team, completely aloof of all the variables at play and somehow everything would work in their favor. It’s even more absurd when you consider that Trump was the President of the United States for four years. Trump said:
“We’re going to put tariffs on them and they’re going to do—and you know what they can do? Then Mercedes-Benz will start building in the United States. And they have a little bit, but you know what they really are? Assembly, like in South Carolina. But they build everything in Germany, and then they assemble it here. They get away with murder because they say, oh, yes, we’re building cars. They don’t build cars. They take them out of a box and they assemble them. We could have our child do it.”
I can’t emphasize enough how physically demanding it is to work in an assembly plant. The wear and tear on the body gradually accumulate over years of 12-hour shifts to the point where workers are in constant pain. Conditions can be even worse in non-union factories like those run by Elon Musk, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. A worker died at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory after apparently suffering a cardiac arrest. The victim’s family claims he was electrocuted in a $1 million lawsuit against Tesla, KVUE reports. According to a report from the Information, one in every 21 Tesla autoworkers were injured in 2022.
Trump has a strange relationship with autoworkers. He clearly wants to win their votes while completely belittling what they do and demonizing the union that represents their interests. Last year, the Republican candidate held a rally at a non-union plant in Michigan where his campaign paid $20,000 to hold signs posing as UAW members. With Trump planning to visit a McDonald’s on Sunday to mock Kamala Harris’ employment history, he should try to build a car during his next stop at an assembly plant.