Donald Trump, the billionaire and national GOP presidential frontrunner who just won the New Hampshire primary and is polling ahead of the field in South Carolina, is seizing a major political opportunity with the news that Ford and Carrier are shipping thousands of U.S. jobs to Mexico.
In a new exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Trump responded to the news that Ford Motor Company is doubling production capacity at a factory in Mexico, instead of expanding in the United States.
He also responded to the news that Carrier, an Indianapolis-based air-conditioning manufacturer, and a division of United Technologies, is shipping 1,400 jobs to Mexico.
Trump noted that his planned border wall with Mexico has “economic reasons” behind it as well as the obvious security reasons. “I’ve been telling everybody this from day one: We’re going to have nothing left,” Trump told Breitbart News.
The steel [production] is going to be there. The cars are going to be there. Mexico is going to be the car capitol of the world. Michigan is being decimated. That’s why I’m doing so well in Michigan—because people say I’m the only one who understands what’s going on. The other candidates have no clue as to what’s going on. I’m talking about it all the time. There’s even a piece of the reason that I like the wall is for economic reasons. They’re coming over here doing whatever they want to do economically.
On Friday, shocking cell phone video of workers at Carrier being fired en masse emerged. A company executive can be heard saying “it became clear that the best way to stay competitive and to protect the business for the long term is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico.”
The stunned workers protested the company executive making the announcement, shouting and booing at him—some using vulgarities.
“Listen, I’ve got information that’s important to share as part of the transition if we can go ahead,” the executive continues. “If you don’t want to hear it, other people do. So let’s quiet down, thank you very much.”
Then he dropped another bomb. “We also intend to relocate the distribution center from Indianapolis as well,” he said. “Relocating our operations to Monterrey will allow us to maintain high levels of product quality at competitive prices and continue to serve the extremely price sensitive marketplace. I want to be clear: This is strictly a business decision.”
After more shouting—and more pleading from the executive for the workers to settle down—he continued by noting that the workers who filled jobs in that facility were all performing well, but it’s simply a cost-cutting measure to ship all their jobs to Mexicans in Monterrey.
“It’s important you understand there will be no impact on jobs today—in fact the first transition won’t take place until the middle of 2017,” the company executive says. “We expect the move to take place in phases, over approximately three years to ramp down our operations, in the Indianapolis facility. We expect the transition to continue through 2019.”
A chief reason why it’s cheaper for these companies to do business in Mexico instead of in the United States is because of globalist trade deals, including the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) portion of Obamatrade.
The TPP is backed by several major GOP presidential candidates, and includes Mexico in the deal—along with a group of other Pacific Rim nations.
Trump warned in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News that this is only the beginning of what’s going to come if he isn’t elected president—and if he doesn’t use the office to reverse the trend by implementing policies that make it more expensive for companies like Ford and Carrier, among others, to do business like this.
“There’s only one way you’re going to reverse it, and that’s that you’re going to have to make it more expensive to do business that way,” Trump told Breitbart News.
First of all, you’re going to have to look to lower taxes [for those who do business inside the United States]—and we may very well have to charge taxes at the border, when somebody drives a car through the border to sell it in the United States. But look, we’ve closed our plants. We’ve lost our jobs. They’re no going to build cars in Mexico and sell them in the United States, okay? We can lower our taxes, and we’re probably going to have to charge a surtax at the border. Otherwise we’re going to lose a fortune. And that will help Ford and other people make a decision to buy in the United States, to build in the United States.
Trump’s latest interview with Breitbart News focused first on how Mexican drug cartels should be, in his view, treated like an “enemy army” south of the border and secondly on these trade issues. More from Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming soon.