As they assemble in Milwaukee, are the MAGA Republicans taking seriously their newly minted pro-worker rhetoric? The GOP platform announces itself with an almost Rooseveltian flourish, dedicating the party “To the Forgotten Men and Women of America.” That’s a nice touch, but when it comes to actual worker welfare issues, the new GOP platform emphasizes, overwhelmingly, immigration restriction, often in the most racist fashion, as well as raising obstacles to trade with China. There is very little else that bears directly on worker status.

The platform does call for “merit-based immigration” in contrast to what the GOP labels “chain migration,” allowing spouses or children of those new workers into the country. That probably opens the door to the kind of temporary employees demanded by both Silicon Valley and American agribusiness, but, please, no family members! The platform favors ending the transition to electric vehicles, an industrial policy championed by both President Biden and a newly powerful UAW, whose 2023 strike ensured that higher wages and union jobs would spread to many new battery plants and EV factories. Trump and the GOP are wagering that EVs will still fail, and in their place their platform offers a bet on crypto and artificial intelligence.

One of the very few places where the platform-writers put forward a specific work-related proposal comes with a call to eliminate the tax on the tips that restaurant and hospitality workers earn, a substit.