He probably won’t even bother, for he can just as easily maul individual companies like Harley Davidson by tweeting about them and watching their stock slide. And depending on the circumstances, he could claim that he’s protecting American jobs and a lot of his base would lap it up.
They gave tax breaks to the billionaire oligarchs who are helping him destroy democracy – that’s all that matters. A publicly-owned corporation, owned by pensioners and 401K holders nearing retirement? Pfffff!
As much as I hate Trump, I’m having a hard time drumming up any sympathy for Harley Davidson. They got a huge windfall from the GOP tax cut, then turned around and closed their factory in Kansas City, putting a couple thousand people out of work. So fuck them.
(I imagine the vast majority of Harley riders to be Trump supporters, so it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.)
It is specifically not the companies themselves that we are drumming up sympathy for, it is the employees of those companies that are put out of work that we are concerned about.
And that’s what Trump is counting on – that there will be more sympathy for dislocated workers than outrage over the fact that a sitting president is meddling in free enterprise like a dictator in a kleptocracy.
And of course Republicans will cheer Trump along. After all, remember how Republicans, in a rare show of unity, cheered Barack Obama as he tried to stick it to British Petroleum in the wake of Deepwater Horizon? Oh, wait –
The president of Bikers for Trump was on CNN today; blaming Harley (suggesting Indian as an alternative) and defending Trump. He must have fallen on his head without a helmet.
I really think we should strive to be accurate when listing Trumpgressions. To do otherwise opens the door to cries of “lies” or “fake news” or even accusations of idiocy and incompetence.
It’s like fighting terrorists: we have to be right all the time but they have no such restrictions.
My bad - posting from work, going from memory. I should know better than that around here.
This is the article I was remembering from several months ago, and botched the numbers. So, 800 jobs lost in Kansas City, 450 jobs added in York, net loss of 350 jobs.
My point remains though - HD got their tax cut, took the money and ran.
It doesn’t always work that way, especially for small, specialized businesses. Not every business will be able to diversify their specialized operations to serve other, similar companies that need their services. This is especially true if the company you serve knows that they have you by the balls and the supplier can’t negotiate enough of a margin to expand and diversify. I am not saying and don’t know if that’s what happened in KC, but it does happen very often all over.
My apologies: I wasn’t really asking. I was anticipating what a Trumpist’s take on it would be. I know the dripping sarcasm prolly didn’t come across as well when you read it as it seemed to when I was typing my post and so I apologize.
Competence has nothing to do with it. They’re competent at manipulation, at distorting reality, at playing tribes against one another, and thrashing their enemies.