CNBC's Jim Cramer, who has a long history of attacking the efforts of organized labor, encouraged car manufacturers to play hardball with the United Auto Workers as they threatened to go on strike.
During a Thursday morning broadcast, Cramer took aim at United Auto Workers' President Shawn Fain, whom he has targeted in the past for purportedly pushing "class warfare."
"I think he's a paper tiger," Cramer said of Fain. "I think there's a nuclear option on the table if he's not careful. And that nuclear option is a country called Mexico."
When some of Cramer's cohosts questioned whether American automakers could really just pack up all their plants and move them to Mexico, Cramer replied, "Mercedes did it in two years."
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Cramer also touted the fact that automakers would only have to pay the Mexican workforce $5 an hour.
"You wanna play ball, you wanna keep doing this?" Cramer asked rhetorically. "Mexico."
Last month, Cramer declared Fain "frightening" and also floated the possibility of moving all production to Mexico in response to his rhetoric against the auto companies.
"This man, Shawn, who is just talking about capitalism and the nature of capitalism and how it's really hurt workers," he said at the time. "It's the kind of language where you say, 'You know what, we should have built all our [electric vehicles] in Mexico. It's that bad!"
