During tonight’s CBS Republican presidential debate, Donald Trump was the only candidate to address the news that Carrier will be sending hundreds of American jobs to Mexico.
The GOP frontrunner said that under a President Trump, Carrier would stay and “build in the United States because we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers.”
Video footage emerged yesterday, which went viral, capturing the anger and heartache of 1,400 Indianapolis workers who were informed that they soon would be out of work, as their company will be sending their jobs to Mexico. The New York Post described the video as “stomach-turning.”
The company representative tried to quiet the crowd, as workers of different races and ethnicities cried out in outrage and despair. “Let’s quiet down,” the company representative said in the video.
Trump brought up Carrier’s move to Mexico, not just once but on two separate occasions during the debate.
Early in the debate, Trump said:
I’m going to bring jobs back from China. I’m going to bring jobs back from Mexico and from Japan, where they’re all — every country throughout the world — now Vietnam, that’s the new one. They are taking our jobs. They are taking our wealth… We’re going to bring that money back. You take a look at what happened just this week, China bought the Chicago Stock Exchange, China, a Chinese company. Carrier is moving to Mexico, air conditioning company. Not only the ones I talk about all the time, Nabisco and Ford and — they’re all moving out.
Later in the evening, Trump discussed the video specifically, and how he would address the problem as President. Trump said, “Carrier is moving — and if you saw the people, because they have a video of the announcement that Carrier is moving to Mexico, OK?”
Trump said that if he were President:
I would go right now to Carrier and I would say I am going to work awfully hard. You’re going to make air conditioners now in Mexico. You’re going to get all of these 1400 people that are being laid off — they’re laid off. They were crying. They were — it was a very sad situation. You’re going to go to Mexico. You’re going to make air conditioners in Mexico, you’re going to put them across our border with no tax. I’m going to tell them right now, I am going to get consensus from Congress and we’re going to tax you when those air conditioners come. So stay where you are or build in the United States because we are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers.
As Breitbart News has previously reported, “globalist trade deals and the off-shoring of American jobs have become a central focus of the 2016 race, as earlier this month President Obama’s signed what could arguably be one of the impactful trade agreements in modern history, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
Trump has distinguished himself from the Republican field by repeatedly articulating his aggressive opposition to globalist trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
By a nearly five-to-one margin, Republican voters believe these so-called free trade deals lower wages rather than raise them.
In contrast to Trump, Marco Rubio has previously endorsed the TPP on multiple occasions—going so far as to describe the deal as a “pillar” of his hoped-for Presidency. Now, however, Rubio says he will not tell voters how he will vote on the deal until at least May 18th—once most of the primaries are over. The CBS moderators, however, did not ask Rubio about his longstanding support for Obama’s trade agenda in tonight’s debate.
Similarly, while Ted Cruz now says he will not support the TPP “in its current form,” Cruz had previously supported Obama’s trade agenda. Cruz even co-authored an op-ed with Paul Ryan in the Wall Street Journal in favor of fast-tracking TPP.
Indeed, on May 22nd, Cruz voted for fast-tracking TPP. At the time, it was believed that this would the final vote on the matter. When it went to the Senate a second time, however, Cruz changed his vote, citing specific concerns unrelated to fast-track, but regarding certain provisions about immigration law and the export-import bank.
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