Carrier Just Taught Corporate America How To Strong-arm Business Friendly Tax Credits
As President-elect Donald Trump continues to move freely under the low bar the media has set for him, on Thursday he managed to pull off yet another unsurprising “win” of the news cycle.
This time the win comes after news broke that Trump managed to save close to a thousand American jobs that would have otherwise been sent to Mexico by the air-conditioning company, Carrier. On the campaign trail Trump enthusiastically spoke of the consequences American companies moving their operation to foreign countries would face. When mentioning Carrier specifically, he boasted
“This is so easy. It’s not presidential when the president calls up the head of a damn air-conditioning company, but it’s so much fun for me.”
However, what isn’t being said is that Donald’s bargaining tool for this deal was the taxpayers’ dollar. And those consequences? Forget about ‘em. Of the 2000 jobs Carrier originally intended for Mexico, 1000 will still be heading that way consequence-free. So with no consequences and a willing dependency on the taxpayers’ dollar, this sets a really bad precedent that corporate America is sure to follow.
The President-elect was able to save these jobs by offering an annual $700,000 tax break to Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, spanning over several years. And Carrier officials have confirmed the state of Indiana’s $7,000,000 incentive package that was offered to them. Granting businesses government subsidies is something known as Corporate Welfare.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, once Presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders rightfully exclaimed that the President-elect, “has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives.”
So while you may read headlines like these:
Remember that the devil is in the details.
