Brent Snavely

Detroit Free Press

UAW President Dennis Williams said Thursday the union hoped to work with the incoming President-elect Donald Trump to change, fix or dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"I am prepared to sit down and talk to him about trade. NAFTA is a problem. It is a huge problem to the American people," Williams said today in Detroit.

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NAFTA, which became effective in 1994, has led to a loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. with many -- but not all -- of those jobs going to Mexico. Nearly all automakers have built new plants in Mexico in recent years and Mexico passed Canada in 2008 to become the second biggest manufacturer of new cars in North America.

For years, the UAW has railed against NAFTA and other free trade agreements while Republicans have generally supported free trade deals. This year, Trump turned Republican politics upside down by appealing to working-class union members and promising to pull the U.S. out of NAFTA.

While the UAW and Trump disagree on many issues, Williams sees an opportunity for labor unions and the new president to find common ground.

He also endorsed Trump's proposed 35% tariff on cars imported from Mexico even though the rules of the World Trade Organization -- an organization formed in 1995 with 164 members -- bars punitive tariffs on a single country.

"We will work with President-elect Trump as much as we can," Williams said. "We have always been very critical about trade agreements that did not protect American jobs, and American workers, and have been very vocal on it and very tough on it."

Even with a potential ally in the White House on trade issues, Williams acknowledged that dismantling NAFTA would be difficult. Automakers have spent billions to build plants in Mexico and suppliers have followed, setting up their own plants close to the assembly plants.

Imposing steep tariffs on those vehicles or erecting trade barriers would cause the price of those cars to increase in the U.S. and could throw the U.S. auto industry -- and the companies that employ the most UAW members -- into turmoil.

Still, Williams said, "I think that companies ought to build where they sell. I look at the amount of money that General Motors, and Ford, Toyota, Nissan and others are putting into Mexico....and the majority of their products are being sent back up here to be sold…that is jobs walking away from the American citizens, and our communities, and our states."

Trump has frequently singled out Ford for its decision to move production of small cars to Mexico and for a decision to build a new $1.6 billion plant there that will begin operating in 2018.

But Ford is hardly alone with its plans to expand production in Mexico. Vehicles including some Chevrolet Silverado Crew cabs, Fiat 500, Ford Fiesta, Ford Fusion, Honda Fit, Nissan Versa, some Ram pickups, the Volkswagen Golf and others are made in Mexico.

"We are always going to have trade. We are going to have imports and exports. It's about what kind of imports and exports," Williams said.

Although the UAW endorsed Democratic contender Hillary Clinton and heartily backed President Obama in 2008 and 2012, an internal poll before the 2016 election showed that 28% of union's members backed Trump. Williams said 61% supported Clinton, while 6% were undecided.

In 2012 about 32% of UAW members voted for Mitt Romney and in 2008 about 31% voted for John McCain, suggesting Trump's support wasn't much stronger than prior Republican presidential candidates.

But the real percentage of UAW Trump supporters may have been higher — particularly given how many pollsters underestimated the number of the Republican's backers.

In Michigan, Trump outperformed Romney practically everywhere and in all but 10 of the state’s 83 counties, according to actual voting data obtained from the state of Michigan. In 58 counties, Trump improved on Romney’s actual vote totals by 10% or better.

The UAW is one of the largest unions in the Midwest. It had 408,639 members in 2015, up 1.3% from 2014, and its membership has since grown to about 415,000.

Trump appealed strongly to the UAW's core membership — working-class, assembly-line auto workers without a college degree — by blasting NAFTA's role in moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico and elsewhere.

Williams said the UAW knew Trump's message -- which often was similar to the UAW's historical message on trade -- was connecting with UAW members.

"We knew there was anger out there...We put out more information about the candidates this time around than any other time previously," Williams said. "So we did not underestimate him. We knew the messages were resonating."

Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely. USA Today Reporter Nathan Bomey and Free Press reporter Todd Spangler contributed to this report.