Before President-elect Trump even announced his deal with Carrier, he had unwittingly set off a new wave of left-wing economic libertarians. Remarkably, Sen. Bernie Sanders was in the vanguard.
The deal with the Indiana air-conditioning giant, Sanders argued in the Washington Post, wasted taxpayer dollars and set a dangerous precedent. Though fiscal conservatives will reject his economic prescription, they will be hard-pressed to disagree with the progressive gadfly’s diagnosis of corporate welfare.
By airdropping a targeted tax break in the Midwest, Sanders maintains that Trump sent a market signal: The next White House will negotiate with hostage-takers, and as a result, the incoming executive has endangered jobs by incentivizing the threat of outsourcing.
“He has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives,” Sanders wrote. “Even corporations that weren’t thinking of offshoring jobs will most probably be re-evaluating their stance this morning.”
The crescendo of the op-ed comes when Sanders argues that Carrier “took Trump hostage and won.” He gets the analogy wrong, though, and a better version would strengthen his argument.
The New York businessman himself wasn’t held at gunpoint, and in this case didn’t really have to involve himself at all. It is more accurate to say that would-be crony capitalists can now have an opportunity to gamble with their workforces in hopes of gaining special government treatment.
Businesses don’t fear presidential promises of retaliatory tariffs, Sanders argues. They look forward to plush deals.
Conservatives won’t find much agreement with Sanders beyond that point, though. Back in character, the senator takes a hard left turn to advocate for his protectionist Outsourcing Prevention Act, which would make companies leaving the U.S. “pay an outsourcing tax” before closing shop and heading over the border.
While Sanders finishes with protectionist furor, it’s worth noting that the senator made a clean argument against corporate welfare. And perhaps just for a fleeting moment, fiscal conservatives had more in common with the nation’s most prominent socialist than they did the Republican president-elect.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
