Donald Trump isn’t even president yet and he’s already winning for American workers.
The president-elect of the United States has secured a deal to keep 1,000 Carrier Corporation jobs in America two months before he takes office.
“President-elect Donald Trump and Carrier have reached a deal that will keep nearly 1,000 factory jobs in Indiana, the company said on Tuesday,” Indianapolis Fox 59 local news station reported.
Carrier Corporation announced the deal on Twitter.
“We are pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy. More details soon,” Carrier Corporation’s Twitter account reported on Tuesday evening.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday as well that Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor, will appear at the Carrier facilities in Indianapolis on Thursday to announce the deal. The Times’ Nelson Schwartz wrote:
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 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 plant to announce they’ve struck a deal with the company to keep roughly half of the jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.
This comes after Trump announced last week on Thanksgiving that he was working to keep the American workers’ jobs in the United States.
“I am working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana). MAKING PROGRESS – Will know soon!” Trump Tweeted.
In the early days of the Republican primaries, back in February, Carrier Corporation told workers that the company’s U.S. facilities would be shutting down to move to Monterrey, Mexico. A shocking cell phone video of the air conditioning unit manufacturer’s executives telling workers, on a factory floor, of the plans surfaced, and the seemingly heartless video went viral, feeding into Trump’s narrative hammering the loss of jobs due to bad trade deals.
Trump’s first public comments on the video and the Carrier news came in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News back in February, in which he detailed exactly what he was going to do to reverse this specific company’s decision—and the trend in general. There were also reports at the time, which Trump was also responding to in that interview, that Ford was expanding operations in Mexico instead of in the United States.
Trump said to Breitbart News:
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. 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.
According to The Hill newspaper, the deal the incoming Trump administration cut with Carrier resembles exactly what Trump told Breitbart News he would do in that interview: He’s going to make it less expensive to do business in the United States than in Mexico.
“The deal reportedly will keep a majority of the jobs in the state in exchange for friendlier business regulations and an overhauling of the corporate tax code,” The Hill wrote.
After that interview with Breitbart News, Trump repeatedly hammered this case home on the campaign trail in speech after speech at rallies all across the United States. When he went on to shock political prognosticators by winning the state of Indiana—one his onetime rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was expected by pundits to win—it can be traced back to his repeated promises on Carrier Corporation. It was Indiana that delivered Trump the Republican nomination for president—after winning the Hoosier State his opponents all dropped out—and it’s also the state from which his vice president hails. Trump’s selection of Pence as his running mate connects back to his energy in the state of Indiana, and both men deeply understand the battle over bad trade policies draining American jobs out of the country.
This trade and economic security message carried Trump to victories in other major battleground states in the general election as well, where he won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin—each states that have been negatively affected by globalist trade policies.