Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Tuesday defended the deal President-elect Trump made with Carrier to keep 1,100 jobs from being outsourced from Indiana to Mexico as a conservatively minded one following criticism from some on the right.
“Make no mistake about it, our president-elect and I believe fervently in the free market, but you cannot say you are for the free market and stand by while an avalanche of higher taxes, regulations and big government stifle out the competitiveness of the American economy,” Pence said during a Tuesday evening address at a Heritage Foundation event, held at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Critics in the Republican Party said the agreement, which included $7 million in tax breaks from Indiana, was corporate welfare and similar deals with other companies would be impossible to maintain long-term. Former Gov. Sarah Palin called the deal “crony capitalism” because it sacrificed conservatives’ free market values at the cost of producing results.
But speaking to a roomful of fiscal and social conservatives Tuesday night, Pence sought to quell supporters’ second thoughts on how the incoming administration had achieved the deal.
Last month, Ford Motor Company said it was “encouraged” to see Trump pursuing policies that will “make it possible to keep production” of the Lincoln Navigator in Louisville, Ky., instead of having it outsourced to Mexico.
Just Tuesday, Trump announced a $50 billion deal with a Japanese telecommunications corporation called SoftBank Group that he said would bring 50,000 jobs to the U.S.
