President trump past leaders let china take the crown jewels of american industry. Now, we are finally responding to years of chronic trade abuses by defending our workers with tariffs, and anything else that is necessary. Because nobody is going to steal our businesses, nobody will close our factories, and nobody will close our plants anymore. They are all coming back. [applause] susan President Trump has popularized the debate over tariffs in our country once again. But how long throughout our history have tariffs been a subject of political debate . Peter tariffs have been the topic of discussion from the beginning. Tariffs make great rhetoric. Really power people up. One could argue that the United States was founded on a tariff battle. Not american tariffs, but opposition to english tariffs. Susan we will spend some time we started asking questions about the tariff debate and we thought we would bring the audience along to learn more about the role of tariffs and American History.
Where companies, starting with the president of the United States really attacked workers and their unions. And then you tell hopeful stories about different creative and innovative ways that workers have been organizing in unions and other forms. And make policy recommendations. One of the things i have to say, a lot of books like this are criticized because they come up short on the policy recommendations but i hope we get into that because you really made quite a few, i thought, interesting suggestions on what might be done to restore the voice and power of workers in this country. Why dont you start by laying out where you see things right now . What is the status ofworking people in this country and their ability to shape their own lives at work . Sure. I covered it at the New York Times for 18 years. One of my concerns and interviewing people all over our nation is so many people have no idea what unions are and what unions do and how they help bring us the 40 hour work week and
So would i think about this book i see it is really having three major parts. After started you introduce the situation now, you do a really good job icing i think of talking about your stories about how workers struggle, really they themselves let the middle class from this country to a great extent by organizing and by striking and bargaining, for a lot of adversity in my demanding policy changes. And then you go through a lot of the hard times what i call the reagan era which i think we are still in. Where companies and starting with the president of the United States, really attacked or theres a lot in their unions. And then you tell a lot of hopeful stories about different creative and innovative ways that workers have been organizing in unions and other forms. And make some policy recommendations. One of the things i had to say is a lot of folks like this are criticized because they come up short on the policy recommendations but i hope we really get into that because you really
I am laura shepard, director of events and im pleased to welcome you to our author event for comers new book grothman. In conversation with San Francisco columnist, we are pleased to have them here for the first time. I would like to find out how many of you have been to the Mechanics Institute before and how many are new . Please come back and we will give you a free tour of the library and show you the Incredible Library on the second and third floors. The International Chess club is down the hallway and we will tell you about our history. We were founded in 1854 and at the Mechanics Institute we have ongoing author events like this one, the International Chess club with their ongoing lectures and tournaments and book clubs and writers groups and on friday nights, we hope you will join us for all our cultural events. I would like to introduce our guest Roland De Wolk, an Investigative Reporter in print, broadcast and online journalism and a historian university adjunct and author. Du
And they are in conversation with the conversationalist. Before we begin i would like to find out how many of you had been to the mechanics. How many of you are new . Please come back wednesday at noon. We have the International Chess club which is right down the hallway. In 1854. Ongoing author events such as this one. With the inner National Chess club. It presents the ongoing lectures and tournaments. We had book clubs and writer groups. We hope that you will come and join us for all of this cultural events. With the online journalism. Hes also a historian. During his four decades they have specialized in investigative projects as well as News Features with major citations. Being honored by the society of professional journalists with coveted career achievement award. He is also the author of two books by chronicle books. And he is also a senior lecturer at that san diego states journal lecture. He also published the first online journalism textbook. Also with us tonight u phil has