Donald Trump has presided over massive job losses due to outsourcing and plant closings, despite promising to keep jobs stateside, after years of job growth under President Obama.
Donald Trump has presided over the loss of nearly 250,000 jobs to outsourcing or mass layoffs in the year since he has taken over. At the same time, job growth has dropped to a six-year low.
Trump ran for the White House making wild promises about bringing jobs back and keeping jobs in America. But despite inheriting a growing economy, the outlook is grim, suffering from a lack of leadership at the top.
Since January of this year, 243,108 employees have received notices of plant closings and layoffs, many of which have come in states that Trump won in the 2016 election while promising a return to manufacturing and an end to outsourcing.
12,241 notices about plant closing and layoffs were handed out in Florida. 10,396 workers got the bad news in Ohio. 6,564 notices went out in Michigan.
In Indiana, 8,313 Americans received the bad news from their employers about losing their positions. Many of those people were employees at Carrier, where Trump made grandiose promises about keeping jobs slated to be outsourced in America.
He and Mike Pence, the former governor of Indiana, made a lot of noise after handing the company a major bribe in the form of huge tax cuts. But the Trump team did not secure concrete promises from Carrier that they would keep jobs in exchange for the government giveaway. So Carrier is shipping the jobs abroad while keeping their tax cuts.
Further contrary to Trump's campaign promise, jobs being sent overseas have reached the highest rate in five years.
At the same time, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics revealed that job growth is down. America experienced job growth of 250,000 per month in 2014, 226,000 per month in 2015, and 187,000 per month in 2016 — but that measure is down to 163,000 a month under Trump.
He is lagging behind President Barack Obama, who inherited an economy in far worse shape when he took office in 2009.
Failed arrangements like that made with Carrier are echoed in the tax scam bill passed with only Republican votes in the House and Senate and promoted by Trump. The legislation raises taxes on working families, while cutting them for corporations and wealthy individuals.
The promise is those companies will "trickle down" their savings by hiring more people and creating new jobs. That was the same claim made when such cuts were passed under President George W. Bush.
The bluster was quickly followed by the Great Recession and massive job losses. The country, and the world, are just now recovering thanks to the efforts overseen by Obama.
Trump is trying to roll back progress, while promising to keep jobs that are still going away and doing nothing to force companies to keep or add new positions.
It's a bad deal, and American workers — not the idle rich — are paying the price.
