Trade must work for workers, not against them

By Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL Global Union assistant general secretary.

It is the wrong question. And as long as we keep asking it, workers everywhere, in Detroit and Düsseldorf, in Dakar and Dhaka, will keep paying the price.

Let me be clear about where IndustriALL stands. We represent approximately 50 million workers in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors across more than 140 countries. Trade touches every one of them. We are in favour of international trade, but it must be fair. Trade is not an end in itself but must benefit workers and societies as a whole.  What we are against is a trade system designed to serve capital at the expense of the people who build things, dig things and make things.

The pain is real. The diagnosis is wrong.

Workers in the industrialised world who feel left behind by globalization are not wrong to feel that way. The evidence is clear. Research has shown that import competition from China accounted for up to 25 per cent of the decline in US manufacturing employment in the years following China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). And crucially, when those regions eventually recovered and unemployment fell, it was new, younger workers who got the new jobs. Those who lost their livelihoods tended to remain out of work or leave the labour market altogether. The scarring effect of trade shocks is permanent and personal.

This anger is legitimate. These workers deserve to be heard. But tariffs, particularly unilateral tariffs imposed outside any WTO framework, are not the answer.

Here is why. In a globally integrated economy, unilateral tariffs do not reshore jobs. They reroute goods. When one country raises barriers, supply chains adapt. The deficit may shrink on paper while the underlying imbalance persists. Meanwhile, workers in countries that had nothing to do with the original dispute face higher prices, disrupted supply chains and, in the Global South, the loss of the very export opportunities that were supposed to drive their development.

We saw this clearly at our emergency trade meeting on 23 April 2026, where more than 200 representatives from 65 countries came together to assess the current moment. The evidence presented was stark: The tariffs had not fundamentally changed the global trade picture. What they had done was create uncertainty, drive up costs and prices, squeeze the real wages of workers already under pressure, and deepen divisions at the very moment when solidarity matters most.

Strategic, not reflexive

IndustriALL recognizes the importance of using trade defence instruments. Our position, adopted by our Executive Committee and confirmed by our most recent Congress resolution, is precise: tariffs can be a legitimate tool when used strategically, within ruled-based fair international trading system , as part of a broader industrial policy package that includes labour conditionalities and a clear plan to build manufacturing capacity and decent jobs.

That is a very different thing from a tariff war.

The critical question, as our colleagues at the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) put it plainly at our April meeting, is what governments and firms do with the extra time and revenue that tariffs buy. Do they invest in workers, in upskilling, in social protection and in genuinely competitive domestic industries? Or do they allow corporations to capture extra profits and cut taxes for the wealthy, while workers wait for a reindustrialization that never comes?

We know from experience which outcome is more common.

A workers’ trade agenda

IndustriALL has been suggesting  a worker-centered  framework for years. Our ten guiding principles, first adopted in 2018, are rooted in a simple conviction: global problems need global solutions. The answer to a broken multilateral system is not to abandon multilateralism but to fix it, with workers at the table.

That means trade agreements must include enforceable labour rights, not as a side letter but at the core of every deal. It means market access must be linked to compliance with ILO conventions. It means democratic governments must retain the policy space to build industrial capacity without the threat of being sued by multinational corporations through investor-state dispute mechanisms. And it means that public procurement, one of the most powerful tools available to governments, must remain available to support domestic manufacturing and local communities.

The voice of the Global South

One thing troubles me deeply about the current debate. It is almost entirely conducted in the Global North, by and about the Global North. The workers of Africa, Asia and Latin America are mentioned, if at all, as a source of competition to be managed, not as people whose development and dignity matter equally.

International trade is an important vehicle for the development of economies and the scaling-up of social and labour conditions in the Global South. Many developing and least-developed countries play an important role in global supply chains. This is why managing global supply chains through human rights due diligence is a central part of IndustriALL’s work. The direction is clear: moving from voluntary to binding legislation is essential.

If it is possible to establish binding rules for global value chains, why not for trade itself? The world is in an inequality crisis. How do we reverse this trend? The answer is clear: binding rules for trade and production in supply chains so that human and workers’ rights are protected, and a genuine development path becomes possible.

At IndustriALL, we reject that framing entirely. The same rules-based trade system that we demand must work for a steelworker in Pennsylvania must also work for a garment worker in Bangladesh and a miner in Zambia. The African Continental Free Trade Area, if built on strong labour standards, offers the possibility of genuine industrialization across a continent that has too often been treated as a source of raw materials rather than a place where value should be added and shared. Recently signed trade agreements carry the same potential , but only if worker protections are enforceable and real.

We will be seeking the voices of our colleagues from across the Global South in the months ahead, because a trade policy for workers cannot be written only in the capitals of the rich world.

What we need now

The current moment is dangerous not because countries are rethinking trade, but because they are doing so in isolation, reactively, without workers at the table and without a vision of what trade is actually for.

IndustriALL’s position is unchanged and clear. Trade must work for workers, communities and development. That means strategic industrial policy alongside any trade defence instruments. It means enforceable labour rights in every agreement. It means unity and solidarity across borders, not economic nationalism that pits workers against each other.

We cannot build a fair global economy by pulling up the drawbridge. We can only build it together.

IndustriALL Global Union fights for this overarching objective, putting it at the heart of all its actions and campaigns. 

The strength of an organized working class is our backbone in realizing our Congress motto: Organizing for a Just Future.