Labor unions aren't buying it when Trump says, 'I could be one of you'

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump gazed out at the cheering men and women - steelworkers in orange, yellow and white hard hats - and declared his solidarity.

"I look at the faces of you people. I could be one of you," he told them.

That unlikely message weeks ago at a newly reopened steel plant in Granite City, Ill., a town outside St. Louis that has long struggled with declining industrial activity, is one that Trump has cultivated since his presidential campaign. That populist appeal helped him win support from union members who felt ignored or insulted by Hillary Clinton and other traditional Democratic allies.

Now Trump seems close to fulfilling one of his biggest campaign promises to labor voters, a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Few issues have galvanized organized labor as much as its antipathy toward NAFTA, and Trump's frequent denunciations of the quarter-century-old