Does Everything That Donald Trump Touches Die?

Does Everything That Donald Trump Touches Die?
Months after talking up Carrier, Ford, and Boeing, all three companies are cutting jobs.
by Bess Levin

June 23, 2017 5:44 pm


Even before Donald Trump was sworn in to office, he began declaring victories on behalf of the American worker. The bizarre public relations campaign began in November, at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where he announced that his Art of the Deal-style negotiating skills had prevented 1,100 jobs from being sent to Mexico. In January, after Ford canceled plans to build a plant in Mexico, he tweeted, “This is just the beginning—much more to follow.” Weeks later, he delivered a speech in front of a South Carolina Boeing plant, during which he managed to make a sexist joke about how airplanes, unlike women, can still look good at the ripe old age of 30, and boasted, “My focus has been all about jobs, and jobs is one of the primary reasons I’m standing here today as your president, and I will never, ever disappoint you.” Seven, five, and a mere four months later, how are things working out at those companies? Let’s take a look!

Carrier, CNBC reported this week, will be laying off 600 employees over the next five months. Ford announced on Tuesday that it would be producing its Focus line in China. And Boeing, 16 weeks after Trump stood in front of a Boeing Dreamliner and declared himself the savior of the Working Man, confirmed Friday that it would be cutting 200 jobs at that very South Carolina plant.

Of course, it’s hardly fair to blame Trump for global, cyclical, and secular economic trends that are largely beyond his control. But then, it was hardly fair for Trump to try to take credit for every alleged bit of good job news, either. And hey, we’re willing to give Trump a pass on Carrier, Ford, and Boeing, so long as he can admit that all of his previous bogus “JOBS” announcements were fake news, too.

Don’t hold your breath: Trump, after all, cares about appearances first and substance last, or never, which is why he tasked his chief economic adviser and treasury secretary with rushing out a one-page, double-spaced bullet point “tax plan” so that he could claim to be making progress on tax reform (the theoretical bill, which has yet to be written, has been delayed until mid-September). It’s why he’s made a huge showing of signing a dozens of executive orders, which are mostly just directives for government agencies to review rules. It’s why his big, much-touted “Infrastructure Week” amounted to, essentially, a call to privatize air-traffic control and a speech in which he held up a big binder then dropped it on the floor for effect. It’s why he took credit for saving 20,000 jobs that were actually saved months before he was elected. It’s why he strangely claimed that his trip to Saudi Arabia saved “millions” of jobs (a stat he upgraded from “thousands” in a matter of 24 hours, because why not.)

Still, it’s actually sort of amazing to behold the pace at which his stunts have fallen apart. Memo to the employees of the next company at which he shows up: take cover.


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http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-boeing