President Trump is warning that he’s considering an “economic development bill” that would penalize companies that leave the United States and hope to sell back into the U.S. market.
“I also have another bill … an economic development bill, which I think will be fantastic,” Trump said in an interview with Forbes released Tuesday morning. “Which nobody knows about. Which you are hearing about for the first time.”
Trump said the aim of the bill will be to create “incentives” for companies to stay in the U.S., and he said companies that leave will “get penalized severely.”
“It’s both a carrot and a stick,” he said. “It is an incentive to stay. But it is perhaps even more so — if you leave, it’s going to be very tough for you to think that you’re going to be able to sell your product back into our country.”
Trump campaigned heavily on the idea of bringing companies and jobs back into the U.S., and has talked before about realigning the incentives for companies to keep them in the country. Trump talked to Forbes again about the idea of reciprocity in trade.
“What I want to do is reciprocal,” he said. “See, I think the concept of reciprocal is a very nice concept. If somebody is charging us 50 percent, we should charge them 50 percent. Right now they charge us 50 percent, and we charge them nothing. That doesn’t work with me.”
