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 worker voices at home, it silences them in international forums. Earlier this year, the administration prevented representatives of AFL-CIO—the country’s largest federation of unions—from joining the official U.S. delegation to the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) annual conference. Since 1919, employers, governments, and workers have set global labor standards at these regular meetings. But last June, the United States’ most representative labor organization had no voice in key negotiations focused on standards for the gig economy and workplace safety. Similarly, when the United States hosts the Group of 20 presidency in 2026, for the first time in nearly two decades, it has not announced plans to feature any discussion of labor or employment issues.
The ILO is the single largest independent organization that gathers worldwide labor and economic data. With this information, the ILO develops policies and programs together with governments, employers, and workers in an effort to benefit countries around the world, including the United States. For example, the ILO established programs as part of trade agreements with countries such as Cambodia, Jordan, and Haiti that promote labor standards and compliance with internationally recognized workers’ rights overseas. The ILO also played a critical role in ending state-imposed forced labor in Uzbekistan’s export cotton industry. Earlier this year, U.S. foreign assistance cuts to the ILO resulted in 225 jobs lost globally.
In recent years, U.S. global labor diplomacy and programs have enabled independent experts and analysts to gather sensitive information and publish reports that helped inform pro-worker policies domestically and through multilateral institutions like the ILO. These efforts also helped secure congressional passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, landmark bipartisan legislation that has kept billions of dollars’ worth of imports made by Chinese forced labor from entering the United States.
Now, Trump has eliminated dozens of foreign-policy staffers dedicated to strengthening human rights, including workers’ rights and labor standards. He abruptly slashed more than $700 million in technical assistance programs funded by the Department of State, Department of Labor, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). These programs promoted labor rights by combating forced labor, union-busting, and violence against workers. These practices are widespread around the world, where they not only harm workers but also create unfair competitive advantage for firms and countries where they occur. Ultimately, these harmful tactics foster a race to the bottom in labor conditions across global supply chains that hurts U.S. businesses and workers alike.
When Trump cut these programs, many front-line advocates lost jobs, and many workers lost the only source of support available to them. The message was clear: Workers and their champions no longer have protection or the political backing of the U.S. government. Whatever pro-worker concessions Trump’s team claims to have gained from tariff negotiations, these ring hollow when the United States doesn’t have the capacity to enforce them. The Trump White House has done further damage by demanding that the European Union gut a 2024 corporate due diligence requirement targeting human (and labor) rights abuses in global supply chains.
As a result of Trump’s cuts, already vulnerable people are facing even greater risks. U.S.-funded international labor programs previously supported garment workers in Central America and South Asia, places with some of the highest rates of violence against workers and labor activists.
A union organizer who was brazenly murdered outside of a factory in Bangladesh in 2023 and a trade union leader killed in Guatemala in 2024 were each affiliated with labor organizations that relied on U.S. support. U.S. programs provided legal support and capacity-building for workers and unions organizing under serious threats and dangerous conditions. One USAID labor program in Bangladesh supported by Congress for more than a decade enabled women garment workers to address workplace violence, negotiate collective bargaining agreements, and effectively engage with employers. Now, these programs have had to stop abruptly, abandoning workers to fend for themselves.
The United States also supported workplace safety in dangerous sectors such as critical mineral mining in Indonesia and Zambia. One Indonesia-based program helped workers at nickel smelters, where fires can claim workers’ lives, to learn occupational health and safety precautions. Trump terminated all of these programs. Another canceled program involved combating the use of forced labor in Cambodian cyber scams—scams that resulted in millions of dollars stolen from American seniors.
To understand how radical the attack on workers is now, it is useful to compare with the last Trump administration. Then, Congress allocated $180 million for reforming labor rights and standards in Mexico as part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). This money helped prevent labor rights violations in supply chains of U.S. companies that ran through Mexico. It contributed to ensuring benefits for more than 43,000 workers, including dozens of reinstatements for wrongful terminations; nearly $6 million in worker backpay; and free and fair union elections. For example, the first USMCA case paved the way for General Motors workers in Silao to elect their first independent labor union, which negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement with more than 10 percent wage increases for most workers.
Why do these actions matter for U.S. workers? By addressing workplace abuses overseas, Washington helps level the playing field for the United States’ workers and businesses. That is why U.S. businesses have supported these government programs. It is also why bipartisan congressional support for international labor rights programs has increased in recent years. Without U.S. funds for global labor, the United States’ trade will not serve, nor benefit, the country’s workers and companies.
Absent resources to sustain effective labor enforcement and advocacy, labor abuses will persist unchallenged. While the Department of State falsely claims to care for and act on behalf of American workers, the president continues to strip the rights of the country’s workforce, demonize their organizations, and eliminate the global labor policies that help workers everywhere prosper.
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