Summary
Trump is nullifying federal employee union contracts negotiated in Biden’s final days.
Affected contracts include one with the Education Department ratified just before his inauguration. Trump cited a 2010 Supreme Court decision to justify his stance but did not provide a clear legal basis.
Federal employee unions, representing 800,000 workers, vowed legal action, calling Trump’s move unlawful intimidation.
This continues Trump’s prior efforts to weaken job protections, with additional plans to reclassify and lay off civil servants.
Nothing. The way you stop outsourcing labor to cheaper locations is by taxing the product on import to neutralize the difference. If the US did that since the beginning of the global trade, the US would still be manufacturing everything that was outsourced to China. The issue with Trump’s tariffs is that they’re not targeted to just things the US manufactures or things that can reasonably restart manufacturing. These tariffs for example are helping auto manufacturing but make aluminum and parts needed for that manufacturing more expensive. So they’re nonsensical and could actually cost jobs.
Entirely separately, merely protecting jobs from outsourcing isn’t enough because, if labor unions are busted and domestic wages are stagnant.