So remember Trumpty's promise to bring all the jobs back to America? His supporters went batcrap crazy when he bragged about it at his rallies.
Guess what? HE LIED!
FEDERAL CONTRACTING WITH CORPORATE OFFSHORERS CONTINUES
“A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America.” Donald J. Trump, November 4, 2016
Our research reveals that 56 percent of the top 50 U.S. firms awarded the largest taxpayer-funded contracts in fiscal year (FY) 2016 engage in offshoring. In addition, 41 of these top 100 federal contractors, which received over $176 billion in taxpayer dollars in that year alone, have shipped American jobs overseas, and many continue to do so today.
Trump’s inaction is especially notable given that the U.S. government has a long tradition of using its contract spending to promote national policy goals.
A U.S. president has authority under the Procurement Act of 1949 to enact “policies and directives” for federal contracting without additional Congressional legislation and to ban altogether government purchase of goods from countries such as China under the Trade Agreements Act of 1979.
However, President Trump has failed to use this authority to take the immediate action he promised to counter the offshoring of jobs and increase U.S. manufacturing employment.
C ritiques of U.S. trade policy and offshoring of American jobs played an unprecedented role in the 2016 presidential election.
Donald Trump’s electoral campaign emphasized pledges to bring down the trade deficit, punish U.S.- based firms that shift production to foreign venues via offshoring and to “bring back” jobs to America.
His promises won over many voters in America’s industrial heartland who had supported Barack Obama in the prior two elections and may have played a decisive role in winning him the presidency. As president-elect, Trump went on to attract national attention with his highly publicized intervention against United Technologies’ plans to offshore more than 2,000 jobs to Mexico from the Indiana-based manufacturing plants of its subsidiary Carrier.
The fact that United Technologies gets billions of dollars in federal contracts each year played a major role in the public debate, even though the Carrier jobs at issue were not themselves related to these contracts. And, shortly after arriving in office, President Trump declared “Buy American, Hire American” as a guiding tenet of his presidency.
Yet as we mark President Trump’s first 100 days, the Trump Administration continues to reward – not punish – U.S. companies that offshore U.S. jobs. Despite the president having expansive executive authority to set procurement policy and past presidents using that authority to deliver on their policy commitments and goals, the Trump administration has failed to exclude offshoring firms from qualifying for billions of dollars in federal contracts.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.