WASHINGTON: Virtually declaring a war against free trade in a bid to win battleground states in the US Presidential election, MAGA supremo Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take “other countries’ jobs,” besides stopping American businesses from leaving US shores.
“Did you ever hear that expression before? Have you ever heard that we’re going to take other countries’ jobs? It’s never been stated before.We’re going to take their factories — and we had it really rocking four years ago — we’re going to bring thousands and thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars in wealth back to the good ole’ USA,” Trump declared in speech in Savannah, Georgia.
The remarks are part of a increasingly shrill Trump pitch to win the so-called Rust Belt states which have lost manufacturing jobs as US companies have shuttered factories and moved to Mexico, China, India and other countries to take advantage of lower costs and larger talent pool among other factors.
Earlier this week, at a meeting with farmers in Pennsylvania, Trump specifically singled out US tractor major John Deere, threatening to impose a 200 per cent tariff on its imported products if it went ahead with plans to relocate plants from US to Mexico. But this is the first time he has threatened to take “other countries’ jobs,” although a charitable reading is he means to entice foreign companies to the US.
Like hundreds of US companies, John Deere has moved some of its manufacturing to China and India, where it employs more than 5000 people in Pune and Dewas to make tractors that are exported back to the US and to more than 100 countries across the world. In an effort to woo — or bully — them back, Trump is promising lower corporate tax and other breaks, besides the threat of tariffs.
“We’re going to use our resources to our benefit… Americans can manufacture everything that we need, the resources we have right here, American soil… It’s got everything: it’s got the rare earth, it’s got the oil, it’s got the gas. We have everything — the only thing we don’t have is smart people leading our country,” Trump said.
He may have meant to take a shot at Biden and Harris, but among reasons American companies have farmed out, according to experts, is the US does not have a sufficiently large skilled work force, particularly in Trump’s MAGA country. White males without a college degree is the largest Trump-supporting demographic. In some ways, US limits and restrictions on skilled foreign talent coming to the US through guest worker visas such as H1-B has also forced American companies to move some operations, including manufacturing, abroad.
Trump’s own Republican Party, more practical and without the MAGA fever, is leery of his election-season populism. “I’m not a fan of tariffs, they raise the prices for American consumers. I’m more of a free-trade kind of Republican that remembers how many jobs are created by the exports that we engage in,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly told reporters Tuesday in a riposte to Trump’s remarks.
The free trade he refers to not only allowed John Deere to come to India, but also saw its Indian rival Mahindra to make inroads in the US. While hundreds of US companies have operations in India, employing more than a million people, 163 Indian companies have invested more than $ 40 billion to create nearly 425,000 jobs in the US, according to a survey titled “Indian Roots, American Soil” by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).