Trump embarks on victory lap

President-elect considers Palin to lead Veterans Affairs

NEW YORK, Dec 1, (Agencies): Donald Trump embarks on a victory lap of Indiana and Ohio Thursday to celebrate his election victory and apparent success in brokering an agreement to keep 1,000 jobs in the Rust Belt.

The maverick tycoon, who upended the US establishment and the world by defeating Hillary Clinton on Nov 8, made guaranteeing jobs for blue collar American workers a key plank of his presidential campaign.

Casting aside job interviews for senior cabinet positions yet to be filled, the president-elect will visit an air conditioning plant in Indiana which he repeatedly leaned on in public not to ship a planned 2,000 jobs to Mexico.

Carrier announced Wednesday that it had agreed to preserve more than 1,000 jobs and would continue to manufacture gas furnaces in Indianapolis, as well as retain engineering and headquarters staff in the Midwestern city.

Trump will be accompanied by his vice president-elect Mike Pence, who is winding down his official duties as governor of Indiana ahead of the January 20 inauguration, and who also helped to broker the deal.

The announcement was “possible because the incoming Trump-Pence administration has emphasized to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive US business climate,” it said.

“The incentives offered by the state were an important consideration,” it added.

Anthony Scaramucci, an entrepreneur and member of the Trump transition team’s executive committee, told reporters Wednesday that he hoped more companies would follow suit.

“The whole purpose” of the incoming administration’s business platform would be to slash corporate tax rates to make it more competitive for American companies to allocate

The Wisconsin recount was estimated to cost about $3.9 million, while Stein paid $973,250 for the recount in Michigan, which is scheduled to begin Friday. (AP)

‘Recount Michigan vote’:

Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein on Wednesday requested a full hand recount their capital at home.

“I’m hoping that every CEO in America is getting that beacon signal from the new Trump administration that we’re open for business here in the United States, and we’ve got to get American people back working in American jobs.”

Republican Indiana Senator Dan Coats, who met Trump in New York on Wednesday, said he hoped the Carrier announcement symbolized more to come and that he believed other companies would pay attention.

“Obviously the private sector has issues relative to staying competitive in the world,” he said.

“What it will do is open the door to more thought and perhaps more creative ways of addressing questions like this.”

From Indiana, Trump and Pence were to travel to Ohio to lead a postelection rally in Cincinnati. Trump was the first Republican nominee for president to win the state since 2004.

Crowd

The evening event at the home of the Cincinnati Cyclones, which can host a crowd of more than 17,000, is expected to be similar to those that drew enthusiastic crowds of thousands during the campaign.

The transition team has dubbed it a “thank you tour.”

While such rallies are untraditional for a US president-elect, Trump often spoke of the thrill of addressing such enormous crowds during the campaign.

The Republican businessman made it a key theme in his campaign, pledging to save that factory and ones like it as part of his plan to rebuild the American manufacturing industry while preventing jobs from fleeing overseas. He this week that Carrier had agreed to keep some 800 union jobs at the plant, but details of what’s in the deal remain unclear.

Trump threatened during the campaign to impose sharp tariffs on any company that shifted its factories to Mexico. And his advisers have since

of Michigan’s presidential vote, making it the third state narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump where she wants another look at the results.

Stein previously asked for recounts of the votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

President-elect Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by about 10,700 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), walks up to speak to the media after winning the House Democratic leadership election on Capitol Hill on Nov 30 in Washington, DC. Leader Pelosi won the election and will keep her House Minority

Leadership position after a challenge from Rep Tim Ryan (D-OH). (AFP)

promoted lower corporate tax rates as a means of keeping jobs in the US.

“Big day on Thursday for Indiana and the great workers of that wonderful state. We will keep our companies and jobs in the U.S. Thanks Carrier,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

Neither Trump nor Carrier has said yet what the workers might have to give up, or precisely which threats or incentives might have been used, to get the manufacturer to change its mind. The company attributed its decision to the incoming Trump administration and financial incentives provided by Indiana, which is something of a reversal, since earlier offers from the state had failed to sway Carrier.

“Today’s announcement is possible because the incoming TrumpPence administration has emphasized to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive U.S. business climate,” the company said in a statement Wednesday.

Trump’s deal with Carrier may be a public relations success for the incoming president but also suggests that he has unveiled a new presidential economic approach: actively choosing individual corporate winners and losers — or at least winners. To critics who see other Indiana factories on the verge of closing, deals like the one at Carrier are unlikely to stem the job losses caused by automation and cheap foreign competition, and the prospect that the White House might directly intervene is also a concern to some economists.

WASHINGTON:

Also:

President-elect is considering former Alaska Governor for secretary of Veterans Affairs, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources.

Palin was an early Trump supporter and the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2008.

in Michigan, or two-tenths of a percentage point. But Stein alleges that irregularities and the possibility that vote scanning devices could have been hacked call the results into question. Elections officials in all three states have expressed confidence in the results.

Michigan’s recount could start as early as Friday, though a challenge to the recount by Trump may delay it.

“We simply won’t know if there was hacking or interference in this election unless we look at the votes — every vote systematically, impartially and by hand,” Jessica Clarke, a lawyer for the Stein campaign, said during a news conference outside of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman, who says voting machines and optical scanners that count ballots are prone to errors and outside manipulation, told reporters that the recount will show “for sure” whether cyber-attacks have occurred.

“More importantly, (the recount) will provide a defense in the future and a deterrent to any adversary who might want to try to hack future elections.”

Trump’s victory is highly unlikely to be reversed in any of the states.

The GOP says a Michigan recount would cost taxpayers far more than the $973,000 Stein paid when filing her recount petition. Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republican, called Stein’s request “unusual,” especially since there is no evidence of fraud or “even a credible allegation of any tampering. (AP)