Donald Trump is already fulfilling his campaign promise to keep jobs in America. The air-conditioning manufacturer Carrier will keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana, rather than moving them to Mexico as planned. Trump pulled this off with personal negotiation and promises of tax relief (as well as state subsidies from Vice-president-elect Mike Pence’s Indiana).
Some liberals are pooh-poohing the deal, saying that the deal favors big business with the tax breaks and subsidies. So they would rather the 1,000 workers lose their jobs than help businesses. This is the attitude among Democrats that elected Donald Trump.
Trump has also talked with Ford, securing a commitment not to shift more production to Mexico for the time being (though some say the company wasn’t going to do this anyway). And even Apple has been persuaded to investigate making iPhones in the United States instead of China.
During his campaign, Trump proposed charging a 35% tariff when companies that relocate production in other countries bring their wares to sell in the United States.
From Nelson D. Schwarz, Trump to Announce Carrier Plant Will Keep Jobs in U.S. – The New York Times:
From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice president-elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory to announce a deal with the company to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.
Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will hearten his followers even before he takes office.
“I’m ready for him to come,” said Robin Maynard, a 24-year veteran of Carrier who builds high-efficiency furnaces and earns almost $24 an hour. “Now I can put my daughter through college without having to look for another job.”
It also signals that Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on big business, at least in individual cases.
And just as only a confirmed anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could go to China, so only a businessman like Mr. Trump could take on corporate America without being called a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. If Barack Obama had tried the same maneuver, he’d probably have drawn criticism for intervening in the free market.
In exchange for keeping the factory running in Indianapolis, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence are expected to reiterate their campaign pledges to be friendlier to businesses by easing regulations and overhauling the corporate tax code, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump.
The state of Indiana also plans to give economic incentives to Carrier as part of the deal to stay, according to local officials.
Photo by English: Cherie A. Thurlby [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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