Trump: No wage increases for low-wage workers

Conducting a publicity stunt, Donald Trump poses as a McDonald's worker and holds an order near the drive-thru window of a restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, Pa., Oct. 20, 2024.

People's World

President Donald Trump is warning the nation’s low-paying capitalist class that “you’re going to have to fight” increases in the federal minimum wage.

On November 17 in a 65-minute rambling review of the state of the economy before a conference of McDonalds managers, executives, and franchise-holders, Trump announced his opposition to raising the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

Corporate opposition, especially from the fast food and restaurant industries, has stymied attempts to increase it. Trump said there is no need to raise the minimum wage.

“Wages for hourly workers are rising at the fastest pace in 60 years. The minimum wage thing is something you’ll have to be talking about. You’re going to have to fight it,” he told the burger bosses. He failed to mention that worker productivity is higher than ever and that real wages have essentially flatlined for years now.

In his remarks, Trump took special aim at moves to raise the minimum wage in California and at the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, for his support for a wage hike.

Much of the White House occupant’s hatred of Newsom stems from the governor’s outspoken opposition to Trump’s attacks on democracy and his emergence as a possible candidate for the presidency in 2028. “We are talking about California Gavin Newscum,” Trump said, employing his inappropriate and intentional mispronunciation of the governor’s name.

“I know he’s laying siege on the minimum wage, and you people probably know because that’s a very complex subject and you people probably know better than anybody the impact one way or the other, good or bad, and you’re going to let your local congressmen, your senators know about it,” Trump declared.

McDonalds is a key player in the corporate campaign to boost profits by keeping the minimum wage low. It’s a leader in two lobbies that oppose such hikes: the National Restaurant Association and the International Franchise Association.

IFA members attended the D.C. conference at which Trump launched his attack on efforts to raise the minimum wage. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump was more forthright, saying he opposed a federal minimum wage hike but that states could raise their own minimum wages if they want to.

Some red states in the South and the Great Plains have not enacted their own wage hikes, keeping the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage as their own.

Elsewhere, in the years following the 2009 increase, the “$15 and a union” movement, which began in 2012 in New York, has spread and convinced most states—including voters in referenda in Republican-led “red” states such as Arkansas and Missouri—to raise their minimum wages.

The California minimum wage is $16.50 an hour, but many states and cities have gone beyond that, up to $19.90 an hour in Emeryville and $19.18 in Berkeley. And Newsom, the fast food industry, and unions agreed on a statewide minimum wage and standards board for fast food workers, with a $20 minimum wage.

Among other boasts in his speech, many of them either unproven or false, Trump claimed, “This is also the golden age of America because we are doing better than we’ve ever done as a country. Prices are coming down and all that stuff” and that “we’ve gotten 600,000 people off of food stamps.”

Trump alleged inflation set a record under the Democratic Biden administration, when it was actually higher during the “stagflation” of the early 1980s. He also neglected to mention that prices continue to rise at a brisk pace in his own second administration. Instead, he claimed “we’ve normalized” inflation, without offering evidence. “You are so damn lucky that I won that election, I’m telling you,” Trump said.

As for his food stamp claims, true figures are unavailable, thanks to the 43-day Trump-engineered partial government shutdown. Among the programs that came to a dead halt was food stamps, which one of every eight people depend upon to help buy their groceries.

That the president chose to discuss food stamps at a McDonald’s executives conference was appropriate. The fast food giant regularly appears on lists of U.S. companies with the most employees receiving food stamps.