FragilE^ said:
In reality? No, of course not. In the mind of the anti-Trump crowd? Yes. Always. :) |
To be honest the specifics of this deal aren't great and they aren't what Trump promised.
Trump said he would save *all* the Carrier jobs, and if Carrier moved to Mexico he would punish them with a 35% tariff on US sales.
The deal he actually negotiated is this
1.) Of 2100 jobs, he saved about 900 of them, which is less than half, and this isn't what he promised. What about the other 1100 jobs that are still lost here?
2.) In exchange for keeping those jobs, Carrier got some financial incentives and tax breaks. This is far from his talk of punishment, they got a bonus here. This is also a bad precident to set because now companies know they can threaten to move to Mexico, still move a fat chunk of their work force, but receive government grants/bonuses/tax breaks on top of that.
3.) This is the best deal he could get with monstrously leverage, Carrier had $5-$7 billion in defence contracts with the government and that still doesn't buy you enough sway to save even 50% of a paltry 2000 jobs? That is really the kicker, the government had a ton of cards to play here.
This deal, while I'm happy for the small number of regular joes who will benefit, honestly isn't very good and it doesn't to me show any particular business savvy. They had all the leverage in this situation, and only saving 48% of the jobs is better than 0%, but it's still not what I would call a great deal. It also shows to me that a lot of his talk of tariff wars and punishing companies was mostly just bluster and hype. He's not willing to be nearly as tough on these companies as he campaigned on.
