It was a role that Donald Trump relished: A year ago, the new president-elect travelled to Indianapolis to play industrial savior, a kind of modern patron saint of American manufacturing. The self-professed master deal-maker cut a deal. And he was taken.
Before taking office, Trump made a deal with the Carrier Corporation. Mike Pence, the Indiana governor and vice president-in-waiting, would arrange $7 million in bespoke tax breaks. The HVAC titan would keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana for a decade. “They’re going to have a great Christmas,” Trump bellowed from the factory floor to a cheering crowd of local dignitaries, factory workers, and steelworkers.
“And by the way,” Trump said, finishing up with one of his classic superlatives, “that number is going to go up very substantially as they expand this area,” he said. “So the 1,100 is going to be a minimum number.”
As the holidays approach, that number has only gone down. Carrier has already let more than 300 employees go, and 215 workers will be terminated on Jan. 11. Previously they were set to be laid off in December, but that’s little consolation.
Honestly, we all should’ve seen this one coming. It wasn’t unexpected. It was inevitable.
When Trump won, he put the spotlight on Carrier and its plans to move their operation to Mexico. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to them. A corporate welfare queen, the company knew exactly how to milk money out of Pence. They’d been doing it for the better part of a decade, raking in $200,000 in training grants, $300,000 in educational grants, and $1.2 million in tax abatements. They probably couldn’t contain their joy when Trump announced he wanted to make a deal.
Now almost a year later, Carrier has opted to do the bare minimum to comply with that agreement. A press release trumpets the fact that “more than 1,100 jobs remain at the Indianapolis facility” to comply with the Trump deal. There’s no indication that number will grow and there’s little comfort to the taxpayer or to the laid-off.
Sure. We’ve told hundreds of workers “you’re fired,” the company might as well be saying. But in exchange for taxpayer millions, we’ve decided not to fire everybody.
None of this should be shocking. It simply underscores the truth that self-interested companies will always act in their own interest and political gimmicks cannot create real growth. With a mix of bullying and bribes, Trump has managed to keep several companies stateside. To keep them around permanently though, and after he leaves office, is real economic reforms like deregulation and lower taxes.
