President-elect Trump met with AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka on Friday, weeks after the top labor leader announced he was “ready to work” with the incoming administration on issues such as trade.
“We had a very productive first meeting with the president-elect,” Trumka told reporters before departing Trump Tower. He declined to give specifics, saying only that they discusses “a lot of issues” during their sit-down.
Trumka was a critic of the president-elect throughout the 2016 cycle, frequently accusing him of wanting to reduce workers’ wages and making grand promises on trade negotiations that he was unlikely to keep. Last June, Trumka dubbed Trump an “unstable charlatan” when the AFL-CIO chose to endorse failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
But the president-elect’s pledge to undo multilateral trade agreements is an area in which Trumka now believes he can have some influence.
“While many of [Trump’s Cabinet] nominations signal an alarming anti-worker agenda, trade is an area where gains seem possible,” he tweeted last week.
