Add the outsourcing of jobs to the list of things Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump once supported, but now decries.
The New York billionaire has blasted companies like Ford Motors, Apple and Boeing and even swore off Oreos last summer after learning that Nabisco had moved a manufacturing plant from Chicago to Mexico. Trump has also floated several policy proposals aimed at keeping jobs and factories in America, including the implementation of a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the U.S.
But a new report shows the leading GOP candidate hasn’t always been a forceful opponent of outsourcing jobs overseas.
In a blog post unearthed Wednesday by Buzzfeed News, Trump explains that outsourcing jobs “is not always a terrible thing.”
“We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses,” Trump wrote in 2005 on the website of his now-defunct Trump University. “But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.”
The short blog post, titled “Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run,” includes Trump’s assertion that in the case of outsourcing Americans “need to look at the bigger picture.” Trump cited a study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Lawrence Klein to back up his claim.
Klein, he explains, “showed how global outsourcing actually creates more jobs and increases wages, at least for IT workers. [His] study found that outsourcing helped companies be more competitive and more productive.”
“That means they make more money, which means they funnel more into the economy, thereby, creating more jobs,” Trump wrote, adding, “I know that doesn’t make it any easier for people whose jobs have been outsourced overseas, but if a company’s only means of survival is by farming jobs outside its walls, then sometimes it’s a necessary step. The other option might be to close its doors for good.”
Statements by Trump on a host of other issues, including abortion, taxes and gun control, have led many Republicans to question whether the billionaire would remain committed to advancing a conservative agenda as president. In the last GOP primary debate, Trump came under fire for suggesting his sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, would be an appropriate individual to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court despite her support for partial-birth abortion. He was also pressed on his previous support for single-payer healthcare.
With the next debate set to take place Thursday in Detroit, it is possible Trump could face new questions about the comments made in this blog post about outsourcing and about what his plan would be to keep companies from moving jobs and factories outside of the country as president.
