This in no way makes up for their pettiness, Luddism, bullying, crime, and political self-serving that makes the country poorer. But credit where due.

That’s a headline I never expected to write, and I don’t anticipate writing it again, but it seems that the dockworkers’ unions have done some good for once.

As our editorial this morning noted, the Trump administration appears to be backing off from its maximalist anti-trade position. The deal the U.S. struck with China basically took away the retaliatory tariffs from both sides in exchange for basically nothing, a sign that negotiators realized that it isn’t a good idea to have an effective embargo in both directions between the world’s two largest economies.

The Washington Post reports that part of the reason for the climbdown was concerns that dockworkers would be among the workers most affected by stopping trade:

By the end of the month, though, a growing number of blue-collar workers whom Trump saw as part of his political base — including longshoremen and truckers — began warning that tariffs and a near-total cessation of trade with China were hurting them. Behind the scenes, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other aides told Trump that his own voters were in danger if the tariffs did not come down, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. . . .

The fallout also highlighted just how many obstacles there will be to implementing Trump’s tariff vision. In addition to public criticism from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the president faced defections from other players typically viewed as allies — struggling manufacturers, truckers with plummeting orders, construction firms fearing rising costs.

I’d rather that they rolled back the tariffs after reading up on the benefits of free trade and the follies of protectionism, but at this point, whatever it takes to get them to a more positive place is fine by me. It’s certainly true that longshoremen would have been hammered by a significant reduction in international trade, and the political calculation by Wiles and Bessent seems sound.

This in no way makes up for the dockworkers’ unions’ pettiness, Luddism, bullying, integration with organized crime, harming other supply-chain workers, keeping U.S. ports among the least efficient in the world, and political self-serving that makes the country poorer. But just this once, they had the president’s ear on an important topic, and they used their influence for good. Credit where it’s due.