LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

[arizona1]

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.

In fact, United Technologies is still receiving contracts
under his administration despite going ahead with
plans to relocate more than 1,000 jobs to Mexico even
after Trump’s intervention.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/GJN-GTW-Report-Federal-Contracting-With-Corporate-Offshorers-Continues-Final.pdf