President Donald Trump has spent much of this week talking about the idling of General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio, production plant, some four months after it made national news. Having promised no such plant would close on his watch, Trump turned to an unusual villain in a speech Wednesday: union dues.

Speaking to a crowd at a different manufacturing facility in Lima, Trump laid blame for the shuttering of Lordstown at the feet of the United Auto Workers union. The UAW has represented workers there for decades, and Trump has publicly attacked Dave Green, the president of the union’s Lordstown local.

“You’re paying too much dues,” Trump said to workers. “As an example, they [the UAW] could’ve kept General Motors. They could’ve kept it in that gorgeous plant at Lordstown. They could’ve kept it. Lower your dues. Lower your dues.”

It isn’t clear whether Trump was explicitly blaming union dues for the closure or clumsily arguing that dues should be lower because the plant closed and that it was somehow the UAW’s fault.

Cleveland.com called Trump’s statement “curious,” given that union dues are paid by workers, not companies, and wouldn’t have figured in GM’s decision to idle the plant. The company is making a strategic shift away from smaller vehicles ― the plant manufactured its Chevy Cruze there ― and doubling down on trucks and SUVs in an era of cheap gas.

The UAW’s dues are about 1.5 percent of a worker’s earnings — a fairly typical rate. Dues are usually drawn directly from a worker’s paycheck and go toward the costs of bargaining for a contract, representing employees and (if the worker allows it) the union’s political activities. After raising dues several years ago, the UAW laid out a plan last year to reduce them.