I see a lot of good and bad in unions. From a policy POV, I prefer a wealth tax that redistributes to regular people (workers), either as a UBI or tax break or social safety net. That wealth tax needs be global, similar in implementation to the global minimum corporate tax, to prevent capital flight.

This tax achieves a similar outcome to unions, it makes the lives of regular workers better by reducing the number of hours they need to work and giving them options, which implicitly changes the bargaining power. But on net it has much less downsides than unions. And it's more future proof when AI starts making people unemployed, whether that happens now or in 20 years.

So people should just accept that they get poorer every year and then the plant still moves abroad when the tax incentives stop?

The fairy tale of "unions are bad" is only good for the rich who get paid either way, just more without unions.

So politicians should put tariffs on cars from mexico to make it more expensive.

Exactly. It’s a medium timeline win. They won’t move prod there overnight, but eventually they will shift prod there and then it will become another brownfield company town like they have in the rust belt.