Are You A Carrier Pigeon?

Meaning, are you falling for the Trump propaganda about how the blue-collar billionaire has saved American jobs? Okay, bad metaphor.

Anyway, in today's Abbreviated Pundit Round-up at Daily Kos, Mark Sumner quotes Bernie Sanders, who puts it quite succinctly:

President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly announce a deal with United Technologies, the corporation that owns Carrier, that keeps less than 1,000 of the 2,100 jobs in America that were previously scheduled to be transferred to Mexico.

In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut.

Bernie goes on:

Let’s be clear. United Technologies is not going broke. Last year, it made a profit of $7.6 billion and received more than $6 billion in defense contracts. It has also received more than $50 million from the Export-Import Bank and very generous tax breaks. In 2014, United Technologies gave its former chief executive Louis Chenevert a golden parachute worth more than $172 million. Last year, the company’s five highest-paid executives made more than $50 million. The firm also spent $12 billion to inflate its stock price instead of using that money to invest in new plants and workers.

Let's see, now: threaten and bluster on the campaign trail? Check. Cave in and offer $7 million in tax breaks to a hugely profitable corporation, money from the wallets of Indiana taxpayers? Check. Brag incessantly in the media about protecting American jobs? Check. Mission accomplished; sit back and bask in the adoration of the Carrier pigeons.

There are lots of articles that criticize Trump's Carrier deal, but will any of them penetrate the consciousness of his adoring fans? Click here for Eugene Robinson's Trump takedown at The Washington Post, in an article entitled "Trump will helm a government of, by and for corporate America."

“If they’re going to fire all their people, move their plant to Mexico, build air conditioners, and think they’re going to sell those air conditioners to the United States — there’s going to be a tax,” Trump said on “Meet the Press” in the summer. “It could be 25 percent, it could be 35 percent, it could be 15 percent, I haven’t determined.”

But that was in the summer, when campaign bluster cost nothing and there were votes to be courted.

In fact, how about giving United Technologies state tax breaks worth about $7 million over the next decade, in exchange for moving only 1,300 jobs to Mexico? That’s basically the deal offered by Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who happens to be governor of Indiana (and thus in a position to offer the tax relief).

Robinson goes on to say:

For the roughly 1,000 workers who thought they were losing their jobs to Mexico but now will keep them, this is great news. I am happy for them and their families, and I understand why they would feel grateful to the president-elect. But I don’t understand why anyone else would consider this a good deal — except, of course, the leadership team at United Technologies, which must have sore knuckles from all the fist-bumping.

The Carrier deal is just the latest piece of evidence suggesting that Trump’s populist rhetoric about championing the working stiff and cracking down on greedy globalist corporations was all a bunch of hooey. His administration is shaping up to be a government of, by and for corporate America.

We should pay less attention to what he says, or tweets, and more to what he actually does. So far, this is not a team of rivals but a team of plutocrats. Trickle-down economics isn’t what Trump’s supporters voted for, but it looks like what they’ll get.

And I don't know if I can bear to hear Trump, on yet another video clip of his tour of the Indianapolis Carrier plant, blather on about the production of air conditioners. Yes, Carrier produces air conditioners -- in fact, it's their main business -- but this plant produces gas furnaces, you dolt!

Even The New York Times' token conservative, Ross Douthat, criticizes the Carrier giveaway in his column entitled "A Great Deal for the Many." His "great deal for the many," by the way, is aspirational -- it would be a great deal for the many, Douthat says, if Trump could "deliver something bigger than last week's public relations win; not just manufacturing jobs for a fortunate few, but more money for the many." (Great phrase-turner, our Ross; he also manages to burble about "deep Hayekian insights.")