Teamsters President Sean O’Brien will speak at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee at the invitation of the Republican candidate. The invitation is the result of slow but steady negotiations between the two sides, with the former president meeting with Teamsters leaders at the organization’s Washington, D.C. headquarters in January. The union donated $45,000 each to both the Democratic and Republican conventions this year, the first time it has donated to both parties in 24 years.
This is big news. While rank-and-file union members supported Trump in both 2016 and 2020, leadership was slow to embrace the support of the Republican Party’s top pro-tariff and global trade skeptic. It would not be wrong to assume that a shift in union leadership would be necessary to shift away from decades of Democratic support, but the Democratic Party’s illegal immigration and environmental policies have both put unions in a bind.
The Teamsters are historically the most conservative American labor union. This primarily male, blue-collar labor organization opposed the Kennedy Democratic Administration, supported President Richard Nixon, and in 1980 withdrew from President Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid in favor of Governor Ronald Reagan’s challenge.
Republican politics have been largely anti-union for decades, and that remains true in Washington despite efforts by Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Josh Hawley (Missouri) and others. Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma) even went so far as to challenge O’Brien to a fight at a congressional hearing in November after the debate over X.
While the Teamsters were unable to dissuade Democrats from supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, Republicans made little effort to win union support until 2016, the year Trump and other “realignment” conservatives sought to shift Republican politics toward a more nationalist labor-industrial policy.
Teamster voters have already switched to the Republican Party, but potential union support could free up millions of dollars in spending for the GOP (and drain Democratic coffers). The union has not yet declared its support, but O’Brien has said he will do so after the party’s convention in the summer.
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