Getty Images
Coming through on one of his campaign promises before taking office, Trump announced Tuesday that he’d made a deal with Carrier Manufacturing regarding 1,000 jobs the company had planned on outsourcing to Mexico. Earlier this year a cellphone video went viral showing thousands of Carrier employees reacting the moment they learned their days of employment were numbered as the company planned to restructure and move jobs to Mexico.
Donald Trump quickly seized the story, stating that if elected, he’d negotiate a deal with Carrier to prevent the job losses. “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.”
We are pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy. More details soon.
— Carrier (@Carrier) November 30, 2016
He hasn’t taken office yet, so hopefully nobody is sick of winning (as Trump promises we will be).Big day on Thursday for Indiana and the great workers of that wonderful state.We will keep our companies and jobs in the U.S. Thanks Carrier
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016
One Carrier employee who’s a lifelong Democrat praised Trump, stating “You’re not even the actual president of the United States yet, you’re the president-elect but you’ve done more in your first three weeks of being elected than the current administration has done in the last nine months for us.”
Speaking of which, Obama was among many of those who mocked Trump’s promise to keep those jobs in the U.S.
As the Gateway Pundit reported: On June 1, 2016, Barack Obama held a town hall event on PBS News Hour. Carrier employee Eric Cottonham stated to Obama “My name is Eric Cottonham and I’m representing the Steelworkers Union, Local 1999. And I’m trying to find out, what do we have left far us — all of our jobs are leaving Indianapolis. I see here you’re doing a lot of things, but in Indianapolis, there’s nothing there for us. I mean, what’s next? I mean, what can we look forward to in the future as far as jobs, employment, whatever? Because all of our jobs has left or in the process of leaving, sir.”
Obama responded by mocking Trump, stating “when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s — there’s no answer to it. He just says, “Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.” Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.”
As it turns out, the “deal” was to give Carrier tax incentives, which Trump didn’t have much trouble negotiating.
No magic wand was reported to have been present during the time of the deal.
[Note: This post was authored by Matt Palumbo. Follow him on Twitter @MattPalumbo12
