Trump to seek jobs advice from firms that offshore US work
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump, who has vowed to stop US manufacturing from disappearing overseas, will seek job-creation advice from at least five companies that are laying off thousands of workers as they shift production abroad.
Caterpillar Inc, United Technologies Corp, Dana Inc, 3M Co and General Electric Co, are offshoring work to Mexico, China, India and other countries, according to a Reuters review of US Labor Department records.
Executives from the five companies are among a group of business leaders due to meet with Trump to discuss how to help the president deliver on his promise to increase factory employment, according to the White House.
About 2,300 US workers at these five companies stand to lose their jobs within the next two years as a result of offshoring, according to the Labor Department’s Trade Adjustment Assistance programme, which provides retraining benefits to workers displaced by global trade. Reuters obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The companies confirmed the planned job cuts to Reuters. It is not clear whether the other 19 executives due to meet with Trump on Thursday are currently offshoring work, as the TAA programme does not cover all workers who lose their jobs due to global trade.
The lost jobs amount to a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of US workers employed by those involved in the meeting. General Electric, for example, employs 125,000 US workers, financial filings show.
On the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump has painted globalization as a zero-sum game that has enriched low-wage countries while leaving the US littered with abandoned factories and underemployed workers, and he has threatened to tax companies that offshore US jobs.
The experience of companies on Trump’s task force, however, shows the reality is more complex in a world where they are serving customers across the globe.
Several said they were creating many new US factory jobs even as they move work to other countries.
It’s not clear whether Trump will opt for the carrot or the stick.
Trump plans to meet business leaders to hear their reasons for “why they’re going offshore,” said a White House aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Blue-collar workers who share Trump’s skepticism of global trade say they will be watching closely to see if he will try to save their jobs.
“I don’t think he’s a typical politician, so there is hope alive for middle-class families that he will do something,” said Scott Schmidt, one of 222 workers at a GE engine plant in Waukesha, Wisconsin who are due to lose their jobs later this year when the company shifts production to Canada.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is among those due to meet with Trump.
GE says it is closing its Waukesha plant because Congress has hobbled the US Export-Import Bank’s ability to finance large export orders while most other industrialized nations still offer such financial support.
The company says it laid off 225 workers last year at a Houston factory for the same reason, shifting production to France, the United Kingdom and Hungary.
GE says it is also closing an Ohio factory and laying off 180 workers because consumers are buying fewer of the florescent and incandescent light bulbs they make there. What production remains will be handled by a factory in Hungary.
The US economy lost 6 million manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2010, roughly one-third of its total, in part due to offshoring, but the sector has added 900,000 jobs since then, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Multinational companies say labor costs now are only one factor they consider when deciding where to manufacture. — Reuters