Ongoing reports and analysis

U.S. President Donald Trump’s domestic policies have been painful for the United States’ workers. His foreign policy has followed suit. Nationally and internationally, this administration has undermined labor rights, gutted institutions that enforce labor standards, and targeted labor unions—to the detriment of working people everywhere.

Trump has pursued the most aggressive anti-worker policies of any administration in more than a generation. In addition to reversing wage increases and federal regulations protecting workers’ rights and safety, he will likely have put more than 300,000 federal employees out of work by the end of 2025. He has stripped collective bargaining rights for nearly half a million workers and abandoned enforcement of the labor standards that ensure that workers come home safe at the end of the day with the wages that they deserve.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s domestic policies have been painful for the United States’ workers. His foreign policy has followed suit. Nationally and internationally, this administration has undermined labor rights, gutted institutions that enforce labor standards, and targeted labor unions—to the detriment of working people everywhere.

Trump has pursued the most aggressive anti-worker policies of any administration in more than a generation. In addition to reversing wage increases and federal regulations protecting workers’ rights and safety, he will likely have put more than 300,000 federal employees out of work by the end of 2025. He has stripped collective bargaining rights for nearly half a million workers and abandoned enforcement of the labor standards that ensure that workers come home safe at the end of the day with the wages that they deserve.

Before January, I served as former President Joe Biden’s lead diplomat for international labor policy at the Department of State. Our team understood that the United States’ workers could only thrive if workers across the global economy could exercise their rights—particularly their right to organize.

Trump has taken the opposite approach. Just as this administration silences........

© Foreign Policy