WASHINGTON — Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told Breitbart News exclusively in her office at the U.S. Department of Labor here in Washington last week that she is working tirelessly to execute President Donald Trump’s order to expand the number of apprenticeships in America to at least a million.
“A million apprentices is what the president is asking for,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “We have about somewhere between 680,000 and 700,000 at a time. We just saw 83,000 come online since Jan. 20. We had the International Firefighters here for their very first apprenticeship day that we celebrated and said, ‘We need that workforce in the firefighting system,’ whether it’s wildland firefighters out west or in the east, every single day, how do we fulfill that goal? The only way I can do that is if I’m on the ground asking: ‘Is it working for you?’ Everybody that I’m talking to has said the tariffs and the talks, they’re working for us. So, this job doesn’t seem that hard when he’s leading the way only because he’s laying down all the groundwork for us to come in right behind him and it’s kind of like a vertically integrated team. He’s put together a formidable team to do the job. Somebody like myself can bring trade talks to the table but then say, ‘How’s this working for unions, how’s this working for business owners, and how can I assist you in the compliance of what we’re going to do so we can get to a yes and they can fulfill their goals as well?’”
Of course, Trump was, before his time in politics, the host of the hit show “The Apprentice” on NBC–so this vision from the president for an expansion of apprenticeships in the United States is right up his alley.
Chavez-DeRemer has kicked off a 50-state tour—she’s already been to at least eight states since her confirmation by the U.S. Senate and wants to get to all 50 by the end of the year—where she is listening to workers nationwide and adjusting policies alongside the rest of Trump’s cabinet to fit the needs of the broader economy. She is working with others like Education Secretary Linda McMahon to develop a vision to produce enough skilled workers to meet the needs of the growth that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, among others, are creating for the president.
“As [Trump’s vision] grows the economy, first of all again those investments, when I’m on the ground–I’ve kicked off my 50-state America at Work tour and I have visited eight states and we’ll continue on and finish those 50 states by the end of the year,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “My goal on that is not to check a box. My goal is to go talk to the American worker. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Do they feel like we’re answering the call as the United States government? We want to work with our state partners. We want to work with our community colleges, our trade schools, our university system. What’s the pipeline for the American worker today that’s more modernized? How do we have flexibility in our labor laws that we can be an ally for our business owners and for our workers? When the president is in international trade talks, when our Secretary of Commerce is right behind him as well as our Secretary of Treasury, and the U.S. Trade Representatives Jamieson Greer, when they’re all in line to say, ‘We’ve got the deals, we’re working them through, we’re going to make sure we onshore these companies, and now I need you, Secretary of Education and Secretary of Labor, to make sure we have the skilled workforce and we put them in the pipeline for apprenticeship programs.’”
Chavez-DeRemer said her 50-state tour so far has “been different in every state,” and that she’s already been to places like Pennsylvania, California, and Oregon, among others.
“I started off in Pennsylvania—of course, I was talking to the electrical workers and that was important to see what are the apprenticeship programs looking like?” Chavez-DeRemer said. “This was a small community that was just outside of Scranton. In a small community, oftentimes bad policies decimate these communities. We were not investing in that local area. For instance, and I didn’t have this discussion in Oregon but I went back to Oregon as part of my circuit, in the timber industry it’s the same thing. Bad policies decimate small communities, and we have to build that back. So, I’m talking to unions. I’m talking to carpenters’ unions. I was in California talking to oil and gas—very self-sustaining, and when we’re talking about energy dominance we can do it cleaner and better and faster and healthier. That’s what Americans are asking for.
I was just in Columbus, Ohio, and you saw the investments. Anheuser-Busch, $300 million that they’re investing in a center of excellence to train their workforce. We saw trade unions across the floor as I toured Anheuser-Busch. We’re talking about what everybody loves to talk about: Drinking beer in America. What could be more blue collar than drinking beer in America? We saw the trade unions on the floor and they’re training them because they know they are the workforce they can count on to build back what they need and that’s the manufacturing jobs we lost.
Then I was with McDonald’s, who released 375,000 new jobs across America—that’s key. They talk about at McDonald’s it’s your first job you’re going to have, but again there are major opportunities there. We listened to a young woman, Anna Maria I think was her name, talk about it and now she’s in HR. So this is something that all companies are doing. I was just on the construction expo on the Mall, and saw many of our construction companies here in America talk about reinvesting and talk about technology investments. But there was a German company there that had often imported to the United States and now they are building and manufacturing and doing some stuff here and going to be an exporter out and they’re a German company. So you’re seeing these foreign companies, you kind of asked about that, coming here and exporting out. We want to be a net exporter in order to grow this economy and that’s what the president has asked us to do.”
Chavez-DeRemer said too that the president is focused on a long-term vision for the U.S. economy that sets the nation up for a century to come.
“Trust is built on one, keeping your word, and two, understanding what the modern workforce looks like—and then listening to the market demands,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I was a mayor before coming here. For far too long, we don’t have the conversations with the industries in our communities. ‘What do you need? Who do you need? How many do you need? How can I supplement that assistance with public and private partnerships?’ That’s what you’re seeing that the president is doing. He knows the private sector and he know the public sector. He has asked to bring the two together, and to bring labor unions together, bring businesses together, and fill that pipeline with the workers. We want all barriers to go away. Of course, I’ll look to Congress to do their job when we’re talking about grant funding or we’re talking about education investment. That’s important for them to determine what’s best for their respective states and then I’ll enforce those laws that come into play.
“I want to give them all the technical assistance that they need to get the policies that are best. The president is focused on 100 years from now. He doesn’t even talk about tomorrow. He’s talking about what are the best policies for America as a whole. He wants to be not only energy-dominant but he wants to be workforce-development dominant and he wants America to be leading the way for all other countries. They’re working with us. That is exactly what he set out to do and now he’s delivering.”
Chavez-DeRemer also said she is noticing that union workers, especially those in the trade unions, are coming to Trump’s side in a big way, rallying behind the president.
“We saw that with the Teamsters this past election where almost 60 percent supported the president,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “Listen, I don’t ask if you’re a Republican or a Democrat in the workforce. I just care if we’re providing the workforce for you. That being said, the data has shown a lot of the tradesmen and women have conservative values because they care about their families, they want freedom to move about the cabin so to speak, and they want to be able to—and he’s allowing for that. I think what the president has exposed is the status quo doesn’t work anymore. This is a new day for America. As the president says, the golden age is upon us. I’ve said it myself because people feel it. People are experiencing the positivity he is exuding. He just spoke at the Alabama graduation a couple weeks ago and he told those young people, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do what you need to do.’ That’s what a president should do. That’s exactly what he’s doing and he is promising them that ‘I’m going to deliver not only what I promised to your parents and grandparents, but now I’m going to deliver for the next generation because you deserve it and Americans deserve it.’”
Chavez-DeRemer also said the United States is already undergoing, thanks to Trump, a blue collar boom.
“I don’t know if we’re headed there—we’re already there. We’re there, because if you listen to what the community has asked you to do—community colleges, trade schools, schools for technical certification have already been on the ground doing this work,” she said. “But they’ve just been a conduit and they’ve been this standalone of ‘Hey, I can upscale and rescale the American worker. Watch.’ And they’ve been doing it. Now, they’ve been given the blessing of ‘You’re the ones helping these people.’
“Or, actually, anybody who wants to go back and get a new certificate in a new skill, the president is allowing them to do that. Look at what the president has done with the executive order on artificial intelligence. You think to yourself, ‘Why would he do that?’ Well, it’s the modern economy, it’s the answer to the modern workforce—we don’t want to displace the American worker. We do want to assist them, and if you talk to businesses they’re telling us for modernizing and streamlining and almost the efficiency of the systems in itself will help the American worker. So we’re focused on that to align, and we’re working with our education system—Secretary McMahon and I are in close conversations about how we can make sure we can remove the barriers for education for the future workforce, and of course that’s going to often flow through education, but that is our future workforce and I want to see some of that come right through the Department of Labor so we can guarantee that businesses will have the workforces they are asking for.”
Trump’s Labor Secretary has also clawed back billions of unspent COVID funds, and eliminated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies at the Department of Labor.
“Over $4 billion of unspent COVID funds were just sitting out in the coffers of some of these states,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “We’ve clawed back a little over $2 billion, or almost $2 billion, and we’ll continue to recover the rest of that and return it to the United States Treasury. There is no reason those COVID dollars should be there. COVID has been over for years. Those dollars should come back to the United States and the fact that the last administration and the last Department of Labor didn’t follow through with that… We’re telling that story to the American people because they deserve to know where their hard-earned tax dollars are going. Same with the DEI you mentioned. There is no space for classification. We want to make sure this is a federal government run on meritocracy. The president has been clear about that. Of course, we’ll support the president’s executive order on that because we want to support all American workers and still follow the law.”
As for the Democrats, Chavez-DeRemer said she believes they have not learned their lessons from their mistakes in the 2024 election and lead-up to that.
“They certainly haven’t learned their lesson, which is surprising to me—well, it’s actually not surprising from them. But it is surprising that they’re not listening to the American people,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I think they have one priority, and that’s an anti-Trump priority. It really makes their vision clouded. That’s unfortunate, really, for some of the congressmen and women who are here and have been here a very long time saying they are fighting for the American worker, but this is just an anti-Trump movement that his Cabinet is not going to let stand. We’re going to work hard for him, and we’re going to continue to deliver on the America First agenda that he has said he wants to deliver on. I can’t think of enough things to say where he has given his Cabinet Secretaries the latitude to do the jobs he has asked us to do so that he can deliver on the promises he made to the American people.”
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