The rush to save more than 2,000 factory jobs in Indiana is a high-risk gambit by President-elect Donald Trump, who is putting his reputation as the ultimate deal-maker on the line as he takes on an industry Goliath, those tracking the showdown tell the Herald.
“This is uncharted behavior,” said Robert Y. Shapiro, political science professor at Columbia University. “The risk is failure. He’s the type of person who wants to be a winner.”
But Shapiro speculates that trying to protect 1,400 jobs at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis is something Trump would not enter into expecting to lose. The plant, and another one nearby where 700 jobs are also set to be shipped to Monterrey, Mexico, is owned by the Connecticut-based aerospace and defense conglomerate United Technologies.
“I don’t think he’d do it if it was hopeless,” Shapiro said, adding any deal cut between the president-elect and United Technologies “won’t be made public.”
Trump tweeted on Thanksgiving that he’s “making progress” in talks with Carrier and “will know soon!” if he rode to the rescue in time. But some are questioning if he’ll give away too much to score a pre-inauguration victory.
“I hope it’s not some good-old-boys network, ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ arrangement — we should not be gutting the EPA to keep them here,” said Jared Evans, a Democratic Indianapolis City-County Councilor who’s been fighting Carrier’s plan to shutter its plant in the city.
“I’m all for everything and anything that can be done to save these people’s jobs, I’m just not optimistic,” said Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999.
Local 1999 includes workers at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory, where the multinational company makes furnaces.
“I really don’t know what carrot he could offer, if I’m being honest,” Jones said.
Jones said the company has said it will save $65 million by moving across the border. On Thursday, Carrier said in a tweet it had spoken to the Trump transition team, but said there was “nothing to announce.” A spokesman declined to comment further.
Edward Alden, of the nonpartisan New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said by publicly pushing Carrier to stay in Indianapolis, others thinking of moving to foreign countries could decide it’s not worth the ire and public criticism of the president to do the same.
“If some of the pressure from Trump gets the message out, it could have that impact,” Alden said. “There could be a demonstration effect.”
Roughly 60,000 manufacturing jobs were moved out of the country last year, according to the Reshoring Initiative, a group that tries to bring jobs back to the U.S.
Still, Evans added, hope is slipping.
“Nobody knows anything about this. There’s a feeling of helplessness.”
