Over the next two years 1,400 Carrier air conditioner workers will see their decent paying jobs migrate to Mexico. This highly profitable Indiana facility, represented by the United Steel Workers, will make even more money south of the border where workers earn less in one day than the Indiana employees make in one hour, according the New York Times. (A YouTube video of the heartbreaking plant closing announcement has nearly 4 million views.)
While Hillary Clinton remained silent on this impending catastrophe, Donald Trump turned this facility into the poster child for what’s wrong with U.S. trade policy. He pledged that if the plant moved, he would place a 35% tariff on all Carrier products imported from Mexico as well as a similar duty on the Mexican products of its parent company, United Technologies.
Trump boasted he would make the company cry uncle: “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%.”