For months, Americans employed at the MasterLock factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have been protesting against the corporation’s plans to outsource their jobs — reportedly to Mexico — with little-to-no attention from lawmakers.
On Wednesday, eight Republican presidential hopefuls will debate policy issues in Milwaukee in the primary’s first debate, hosted by Fox News.
It remains unclear whether hosts will ask about the plight of the city’s MasterLock employees or if any candidates will mention the issue of corporations continuing to gut working and middle class American communities with outsourcing schemes, often with no repercussions from the federal government.
As Breitbart News reported in May, MasterLock executives announced their plans to lay off more than 400 employees at the Milwaukee factory and close it after 102 years of operation. The jobs, according to the United Auto Workers (UAW), will be sent to other existing plants in North America — mainly, Mexico, where labor laws go unenforced and wages remain low.
The outsourcing scheme was finalized this month and the factory will close in early 2024. The first round of layoffs will start in November.
Former President Donald Trump made outsourcing a staple of his populist platform in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Most recently, he suggested that he wants across-the-board 10 percent tariffs on all foreign imports to the United States in an effort to restore American manufacturing jobs and those jobs in supporting industries.
“When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let’s say a 10 percent tax … I do like the 10 percent for everybody,” Trump told Fox Business Channel last week.
Trump, though, will not be attending the debate in Milwaukee and will instead appear in a pre-recorded interview hosted by Tucker Carlson. Beyond tariffs, Trump has not said how he would punish companies for outsourcing.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former Vice President Mike Pence — both of whom are attending the debate — have previously backed tariffs but, like Trump, have yet to say if and how they would punish corporations that outsource American jobs.
DeSantis, last month, said he supports a plan to revoke China’s free trade status with the U.S., which would slap immediate tariffs on imports from the communist country. The move would force outsourcers to rework supply chains, potentially moving them back to the U.S., so as not to get hit with big tariff costs.
In October 2020, Pence touted the rounds of tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on foreign imports and warned that President Joe Biden would eliminate them. Since then, though, Pence has been largely quiet on the trade issue.
Other candidates, like businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, have been unclear about how they would go about returning manufacturing jobs to the U.S. and keeping them — focusing largely on criticizing the nation’s dependence on China.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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