Nine months ago the video of a plant-full of American workers getting the news that they were ‘fired’ due to Carrier International moving its air-conditioning plant from Indiana to Mexico went viral and became a meme for Trump’s “America First” plans. Today, according to CNBC’s David Faber, the Trump team and United Technologies have reached an agreement on keeping close to 1,000 factory jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana.
As a reminder, this is what happened in February when United Technologies decided to reinforce both of these trends all at once, when the company announced it would be eliminating 1,400 jobs at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis in favor of hiring some new “foreign-born” employees – only these “foreign-born” workers will be hired in Mexico.
“Two Indiana plants that make products for the heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry are shifting their manufacturing operations to Mexico, which will cost about 2,100 workers their jobs,” The Indianapolis Star reports.“Carrier is shuttering its manufacturing facility on Indianapolis’ west side, eliminating about 1,400 jobs during the next three years [and] United Technologies Electronic Controls said that it will move its Huntington manufacturing operations to a new plant in Mexico, costing the northeastern Indiana city 700 jobs by 2018.”
Watch below as 1,000 soon-to-be Donald Trump voters react to the announcement:
Trump frequently railed against the move and pledged to force Carrier to keep its jobs in the U.S. while on the campaign trail.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Trump told a crowd in Indianapolis in April. “I’ll get a call from the head of Carrier and he’ll say, ‘Mr. President, we’ve decided to stay in the United States. That’s what’s going to happen — 100 percent.”
And now, as CNBC’s David Faber reports, Trump appears to have been right.
More from the NYT:
On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice-president elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant to announce they’ve struck a deal with the company to keep a majority of the jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will rally his base even before he takes office.
In exchange for keeping the factory running in Indianapolis, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence are expected to reiterate their campaign pledges to be friendlier to business by easing regulations and overhauling the corporate tax code. In addition, Mr. Trump is expected to tone down his rhetoric threatening 35 percent tariffs on companies like Carrier that shift production south of the border.
On its behalf, Carrier announced on Twitter shortly after the announcement that it was “pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy.” We expect more companies to follow in these anti-offshoring footsteps.
We expect more details of the deal tomorrow but as The NY Times reports, roughly 10 percent of United Technologies’ $56 billion in revenues comes from the federal government, with the Pentagon its single largest customer. Its Pratt & Whitney division, for example, supplies the engines for the Air Force’s most advanced fighters and host of other planes. So perhaps some quid pro quo.
On the heels of the reported ‘deal’ with Ford, it seem president-elect Trump is starting to make good on some promises (but we can’t help but wonder why President Obama did not do these things?)
