The Trump administration’s sprawling new tariffs took effect in August, and U.S. consumers are starting to feel the heat. The president and his cabinet have said the tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and put American workers first. But are these tariff policies a real solution to the “race to the bottom” that has undercut so many U.S. jobs? Nike, the world’s single largest athletic apparel and footwear brand and an iconic American company, is a prime example of how Trump’s tariffs will actually hurt workers in the U.S. and abroad.

Even with higher tariffs than those implemented, American workers cannot compete with the current wages in Nike’s global supply chain. Many garment workers make Nike products for below $1 per hour in South and Southeast Asia, where the brand’s production is concentrated. In the lead up to August, Nike and other U.S.-based garment giants showed little interest in onshoring jobs. Instead, Nike has already begun to pass the cost of tariffs onto working people in the U.S. by increasing prices for consumers, who already face an affordability crisis. Meanwhile, garment workers reported Nike supplier factories enforcing mandatory overtime and anticipating mass layoffs ahead of the tariffs coming into effect.

By targeting countries, rather than corporations, Trump deliberately misidentifies the culprits of the global “race to the bottom.” Global corporations like Nike have pursued profit at any cost, which has undercut American jobs and pushed countries around the world to compete for industry by offering their citizens’ labor to companies like Nike for the lowest possible price. These tariffs don’t change that. Instead, Trump’s tariffs follow the consistent model of his administration: use the authority of the United States government to empower corporations and billionaires. Trump’s tariffs will do nothing to prevent corporations like Nike from pursuing higher profits at the expense of workers at home and abroad.

Nike Profited From the COVID Crisis

Nike showed us its playbook on how to profit from crises during the COVID pandemic in 2020. When COVID began, clothing and footwear corporations canceled and paused orders to factories in their supply chains with no plan for the impact on the millions of workers, the vast majority women, who make their products. Garment workers in South and Southeast Asia saw their already low wages slashed, many facing months of layoff with no income and no safety net. Women workers reported eating one meal a day and taking on crippling debt. Meanwhile, Nike bounced right back and made record profits by 2021. From 2020 to 2021, Nike’s billionaire founder Phil Knight’s family grew its wealth by $20 billion. In 2022, Nike authorized a new $18 billion share buyback program, benefitting investors.

Garment workers never saw any of Nike’s pandemic-era profits returned to them, despite repeated demands by their unions. If Nike had returned the $18 billion it is spending on buybacks to workers instead, it could offer a $125 per month raise to every garment worker who makes Nike products for 10 years — doubling the wages of many and transforming the lives of a million families.

Nike’s greed is not limited to its supply chain workers in the Global South. The company has announced two rounds of U.S. staff layoffs since February to reduce labor costs. And just this month, it ended a pandemic-era “wellness week” for its workers in order to increase productivity.

The company is also hoarding profits at the cost of public benefits to working people in Oregon, where Nike is headquartered. The company struck a favorable state income tax deal in 2012 that locked in a low tax rate and has paid no federal income tax in the U.S. for years. In the aftermath of Nike’s success in lobbying for continued low state taxes — which are paid into Oregon’s General Fund, which provides two-thirds of education funding for Oregon public schools — Oregon public education faces a budget crisis that has worsened in recent years, putting at risk critical resources for students and leading to cuts in teachers’ jobs. The taxes that Nike should have paid could go a long way toward funding Oregon public school budgets and avoiding further cuts.

The COVID pandemic previewed how Nike is again poised to profit at the expense of working people from Oregon to Cambodia, as Trump’s tariffs bring a new industry disruption. But another way forward is brewing, and it’s not coming from the White House.

Workers Are Coming Together Across Borders

In the aftermath of Nike’s grotesque show of greed, thousands of unionized garment workers from across South and Southeast Asia have come together to demand wage increases and labor rights protections from Nike, organized by Asia Floor Wage Alliance and supported by Global Labor Justice. These workers have been educating each other and finding common cause with unions across the U.S., especially in Nike’s home state of Oregon, in an example of what’s possible when working people unite across borders to challenge corporate power.

A recent action in Beaverton, Oregon, might be a blueprint for the labor movement’s broader fight for a truly fair global economy. On May 28, three Indonesian union garment worker activists walked into Nike’s corporate headquarters. The brave worker activists, who represent tens of thousands of Asian garment workers, wanted to be seen and heard directly by the company’s top executives. They were joined by leaders from the Portland Association of Teachers and other allied unions angry over Nike’s contribution to the underfunding of public schools. Together they were kicked out but vowed to continue their fights together until Asian garment workers and Oregon teachers and students take back their share of the money Nike has hoarded.

The next day, the same garment worker activists held a protest with the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF) outside of Hayward Field track and field stadium at the University of Oregon. The $270 million renovation of Hayward Field in 2020 is one of many vanity projects funded by Nike founder Phil Knight at the University of Oregon, but one with particularly offensive timing — it was undertaken at the same moment hundreds of thousands of Nike supply chain workers lost their livelihoods without any support from the company.

GTFF pointed out how Knight’s massive donations, made possible through years of profiting from the work of underpaid garment workers, have reshaped the priorities of the public University of Oregon, where the union is fighting for decent conditions and a democratic voice. New buildings named for the Knight family have popped up throughout the University of Oregon campus in recent years even as the administration cuts jobs to address deficits. Moving forward, Nike supply chain workers and their allies in the labor movement in Oregon and across the United States are evaluating how they can take united action to hold Nike accountable for its role in both local and global inequality.

Beyond Oregon, the women garment workers leading the Fight the Heist campaign have found strong allies with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), a constituency organization within the AFL-CIO devoted to building women’s leadership in unions. CLUW and CWA’s Women’s Committee led nationally-coordinated protests outside of Nike stores and events last year. More recently, the CLUW chapter in New York City has been publicly calling on Nike board member Michelle Peluso, the Revlon CEO, to meet directly with women garment workers and their unions in Asia.

A Real Solution to the “Race to the Bottom”

Working class anger about a deeply unfair global economy is real and justified. This issue defines both the lives of U.S. workers who have seen their jobs outsourced and those overseas who work grueling factory jobs for $1 per hour and deserve more. But there are no solutions in the politics of division and blaming “other” workers. These tired old anti-labor politics, the ones behind Trump’s version of tariffs, only distract our collective anger away from the billionaire corporations who profit at the expense of workers everywhere.

Nike supply chain workers’ fight for justice is deeply connected with the fight for good jobs and well-funded schools in Oregon. If the women workers who make the world’s clothing win improvements to their wages and conditions, it will raise the floor and protect decent work everywhere, including in the U.S. This fight is not about workers from one country providing charity to workers from another, it’s about workers recognizing their shared interest and shared destiny even as corporations and, too often, governments, attempt to divide them.

Global trade can benefit working people if we shift the balance of power away from corporations and toward workers. Together, organized workers across the globe can demand living wages, collective bargaining, and fair taxation to rein in corporate greed. Another world is possible. The unionized women garment workers who make Nike’s shoes, along with their growing ranks of allies across the U.S. labor movement, are showing the way.