Worker-Oriented Republicanism Is Not an America First Agenda

As Marshall Auerback explained, the Democratic and Republican parties seem to be undergoing a historic realignment in their political bases. For decades, Democrats were the working-class party and Republicans the college-educated. But now the class makeup of each party’s voting constituency has flipped: A majority of college-educated voters lean Democrat, and a majority of working-class voters, particularly white voters without college degrees, lean Republican.

That shift has led many Republicans, including President Trump, to be explicitly “pro-worker.” Writing about the “New Republican,” Henry Olsen states this phenomenon “will require him [Trump] to shift the party’s economic policies away from free-market fundamentalism and toward one that puts workers’ gains, not returns on equity, first.” Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) agrees, tweeting that “we must be a working class party, not a Wall Street party.”

The think tank American Compass seeks to be the intellectual home for this movement, with its report “The Rise of the Pro-Worker Republican” serving as a foundational document. Indeed, the report quotes Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, who told its author that “There are many pro-worker Republicans who are moving the party away from the corporatist elites.”

I am a wonk, not a flak. So, I won’t comment on the efficacy of this repositioning as a political strategy. But I will comment on it as a policy strategy—and judged on that, it largely fails.

At one level, who can be against workers? Only hard-hearted capitalists and woke East Coast elites, right? Maybe. But the core problem is that a pro-worker agenda is not necessarily a “national greatness” agenda, for the simple reason that many pro-worker policies constrain economic growth and competitiveness. Workers, after all, are just another interest group: Sometimes their interests align with those of the American Republic, and other times they do not.

The new GOP’s choice to be pro-worker seems myopic and shallow at best.

We are not stuck in a Marxist class struggle between the interests of capitalists and the proletariat. Of course, neither party should put the interests of capital or corporations above the national interest. Conversely, neither party should prioritize workers’ interests over economic growth and competitiveness.

This tired, binary framework dominates much of American political rhetoric, but it is an artificially narrow lens that misses the larger imperative. The fixation on “capital or labor” obscures the real question: How do we strengthen the nation’s long-term strategic position as a whole?

The answer is a party focused on the national interest—a party beholden to no special-interest group, whether it be unions, corporations, small businesses, environmentalists, or consumer advocates. Economically, this would be a party that seeks to maximize growth for the entire nation. Geoeconomically, it would be a party that does not allow China to dominate national power industries and turn America into a vassal state. This party would embrace innovation for the amazing things it will do for both our economy and society.

That seems well beyond the scope of the worker-oriented Republicans’ imagination. Let’s start with the new Republican and American Compass interest in unions. The impact of organized labor on economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness is mixed at best. Indeed, much of what they do, especially opposing the introduction of new technologies and demanding wage packages that companies in fierce global competition can’t afford, is not in the national interest.

And their position on automation is equally problematic. Many of these new worker Republicans oppose automation, especially when organizations use it to reduce work hours or headcount. For Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, the only good automation is automation that doesn’t displace workers.

We see this view reflected in leading Republican voices lambasting “Big Tech” and AI for developing technology that can eliminate jobs. It is also reflected in the Trump administration delaying the introduction of automated track inspection and other advanced technologies in freight rail systems—innovations that would enhance safety for workers and the public and lower costs for consumers—all because they might reduce freight rail employment.

But this defeats the entire purpose of technology: boosting output, lowering prices, and strengthening national competitiveness. If Cass’s logic had guided policy in the early 1900s, half the country would still be working on farms, with tractors deployed merely to “assist” farmhands rather than replace them and spark the productivity gains that transformed the modern economy.

Antitrust is another case where the GOP’s new proletarian-chic agenda is causing problems. The new “Khanservatives,” including Trump appointees FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, FTC Commissioner Mark Meador, and Assistant AG Gail Slater, all appear to have an animus against “Big Tech.”

While Slater, in a speech to Notre Dame Law School, called her approach to antitrust “America First,” with its focus on workers and small business, it would be more accurately described as “small-business-first” antitrust—an agenda that does not align with strengthening consumers, encouraging innovation, or advancing national power.

The list goes on and on. Other rules heavily regulating internet content are championed by some Republicans as pro-worker and pro-family. Some want to limit the gig economy even though it provides flexible, good-paying work for millions. American Compass even seems to want to overthrow capitalism, or at least substantially dilute it by having workers own the means of production.

To be sure, there are many policies that are both pro-worker and pro-growth, such as a higher minimum wage, reduced financialization, a robust China-focused national industrial strategy, and revitalized worker training and adjustment programs.

But being pro-union, anti-technology, and anti-big-business is not a true America First agenda. At best, it is an agenda of redistribution; at worst, one of national decline and decay. The Republican Party can, and must, do better than that.