Rather than actually supporting auto workers in their strike against billionaire CEOs at the Big Three, GOP officials are instead using the labor action to rail against electric vehicles and stoke conflict with China.

Three and a half weeks into the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) stand-up strike against the Big Three — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the GOP is coalescing around a talking point: that the autoworkers’ real enemy is China.

The argument goes something like this: Biden’s federal policies are driving up electric vehicle production, which requires the import of components, like batteries, from China. This process, according to Republicans, is not only enriching an official U.S. rival, but also threatening U.S. jobs.

This line of thinking fits perfect for a staunchly anti-union Republican Party, because it allows its purveyors to look like they are standing with striking workers, without supporting any of their actual demands, like a 36% pay increase, an end to tiers, stopping the abuse of temporary workers, cost-of-living adjustments and more paid time off. Instead of focusing their ire at the Big Three’s CEOs, who together made $74 million last year, GOP officials are pivoting to a narrative of Great Power competition with China, something they were already invested in, and that has been embraced by both parties in Washington.

“The UAW should use their leverage and force the President to stop subsidizing an industry that benefits Communist China more than it does American workers,” wrote former venture capitalist and U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in a Sept. 19 op-ed for the Toledo Blade. As Kate Aronoff noted for The New Republic, Vance has built his career on ​“making opportunistic appeals to the plight of a working class he routinely describes as lazy, ungrateful slobs.”

“Auto workers deserve a raise — and they deserve to have their jobs protected from Joe Biden’s stupid climate mandates that are destroying the US auto industry and making China rich,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on X (formerly Twitter) on September 15. Adam Johnson observed in The Real News Network that Hawley’s line does not diverge from that of the auto companies, which also claim they want to give auto workers a raise, just not as much as the union is asking for — a topic Hawley deftly avoids.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, now running to be the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, has also embraced this line of argument. ​“These guys are seeing the Green New Deal that was passed under the guise of the Inflation Reduction Act, they’re seeing it drive their industry into EVs, benefiting China that makes most of our batteries,” Pence said in a September 17 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Pence has an established track record of taking anti-worker positions, including his long-standing opposition to lifting the federal minimum wage.

But perhaps the biggest purveyor of the claim that China is the enemy of striking auto workers is former president and 2024 hopeful Donald Trump, who spoke on September 27 at a non-union auto manufacturer, Drake Enterprises, Inc., in Macomb County, Michigan. ​“A vote for crooked Joe means the future of the auto industry will be made in China. That’s what it’s going to be,” he said in that address. As president, Trump’s anti-worker track record included filling the National Labor Relations Board and the courts with anti-union appointees, and restricting overtime pay.

This China-focused narrative is not merely a distraction: It’s an object lesson in how talk of Great Power competition is used to undercut worker power in the United States.

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