Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer spent 2025 traveling to 36 of 50 states on a whirlwind nationwide tour to learn from American workers and to take President Donald Trump’s message on the road.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Labor moved quickly to put the American Worker First in 2025 by expanding apprenticeships, cutting burdensome red tape, and enforcing the law to protect hardworking Americans,” Chavez-DeRemer told the Washington Reporter. “From adding nearly 300,000 new apprentices to cracking down on unemployment insurance fraud and H-1B visa abuse, we’re restoring fairness to the labor market and making the American Worker the cornerstone of our nation’s economic comeback.”
“One of the things the president asked when I was nominated,” the Chavez-DeRemer told the Reporter in an earlier interview, “was to bring labor and business together, and I promised him that with my background of having the trades support me, being the daughter of a Teamster, that I could bring that voice to the table and help him grow this economy so that everybody can have a piece of the pie. And the American Dream is alive.”
As part of her tour, Chavez-DeRemer visited with different types of businesses and educational facilities across the country, including a submarine manufacturer in Connecticut, a naval shipyard in Virginia, an alligator farm in Louisiana, and an oyster hatchery in Maryland — which the Reporter was on site for.
“I say this all the time,” she told the Reporter in Cambridge, Maryland. “As a former mayor, you really cannot understand what’s happening on the ground and how it affects the local economy, the every day, average worker, the American, unless you can talk to them.”
“I wouldn’t know about this laboratory unless I’m here on site to hear these reports, to understand more about it,” she added. “The lovely woman who gave me the tour? She started off as an intern here. Twenty-nine years later, here she is talking about why the oyster industry is so important, and now her daughter is very interested.”
During her time in office, the labor secretary has joined a labor union during a Labor Day parade in Pennsylvania, which she said that, as a daughter of a Teamster, was an example of the relationships she built with labor unions during her time in Congress, as well as how “[Trump] built a relationship with labor unions across his entire career.”
Chavez-DeRemer expects to finish her nationwide tour next year.