The dominant attitude among workers about tariffs was probably cynicism. They mostly benefited the employer, and the union supported them mainly to avoid fighting. This was the lived experience of many who were told by bosses on the shop floor that they better go along with rate cuts or see their jobs get exported while union officials stood by with folded hands.
The Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee and leftists in the shops did agitate against protectionism in their literature and independent activity. The essential argument was that the source of the threat to jobs and living standards was the drive of the corporations to maximize profits by moving operations to places where labor was cheap and unions weak or unavailable.
By this time, the Global South was replacing the right-to-work domestic states as the place of choice for runaway shops. To challenge this, the PWOC called for a range of measures including a tax on the returns from exported capital, minimum wage and union rights in the target countries, and a prohibition for relocating in countries with anti-labor dictatorships. This agitation was part of a broader anti-imperialist politics that had currency on the Left in the wake of the war in Vietnam.
Within the rank-and-file movement, there was some discussion of these measures. But the dominant sentiment opposed making this kind of critique of protectionism part of the messaging. Some of this was rooted in a fear that this would lead to the branding of the committee as unpatriotic or “communistic.” The steering committee charged with reviewing the newsletter did endorse some articles that echoed this spirit. One called for requiring runaway shops to honor the terms of their contracts in their new locations. But faced with so many other challenges, there was not any eagerness to take up a campaign that would challenge the union position in any substantive way.
Obviously, things are different today. But the spirit of these old proposals is important and needs to be replicated. Other countries didn’t steal our jobs and industry. American capital, including the very crowd that now is ensconced in the White House and Congress, exported them to make bigger profits. Now we are told that they will bring their capital back and invest it here behind a sturdy tariff wall. This is not likely, but it’s an even more remote possibility that this will automatically recreate good-paying union jobs that resemble those of our industrial past.