United Steelworkers appears likely to endorse President Joe Biden for the 2024 election, with the union set to decide on its endorsement in the coming weeks.
Union President David McCall said Tuesday that an endorsement for former President Trump would not align with what happened during his first administration.
“[A Trump presidency] didn’t work too well for us last time,” McCall said in a Fox News interview Tuesday. “He put a lot of anti-union people in his administration.”
McCall added that Trump has not reached out to him, and that the former president’s campaign didn’t even respond to its issues survey.
The statement comes after Biden opposed the sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese conglomerate. The president said it was “vital” that the industrial giant remain domestically owned, garnering praise from the union.
The 1.2-million-member union endorsed Biden in 2020, once projecting a massive Biden campaign sign onto the side of a Chicago skyscraper.
The move would be consistent with Biden’s focus on unions. Biden has dubbed himself the “most pro-union president in American history” and made firsts last year by joining striking auto workers on the picket lines in Michigan.
He has already garnered the endorsement of United Auto Workers, after a brief spat over electric vehicle subsidies, the Service Employees International Union and AFL-CIO, among other major labor groups.
The SEIU announced $200 million in ad spending for the president’s reelection campaign last week, one of the largest commitments by any labor group.
“This election, workers are going to vote for candidates up and down the ballot who’ve got their back,” SEIU Executive Vice President Rocio Sáenz said in a statement. “They are ready to support candidates like President Biden, who walked the picket line, took on big corporations, and invested in good, union jobs.
Biden’s campaign has continued attempts to woo the Teamsters union too less success, however. Teamsters have shown openness to both presidential candidates, a rarity for a labor group, and even gave $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, according to FEC filings.
The RNC claimed it never received the funds, and the union still gave hundreds of thousands to Democratic causes, but the donation could show a significant outlier among labor groups that have almost uniformly backed Biden over Trump.
The president met with Teamsters leaders last week as the union also considers its 2024 pick.
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