Keller @ Large: Trump Should Celebrate, But There's Much More To Do
BOSTON (CBS) - Love him or hate him, you've got to admit - President-elect Donald Trump is a consummate political showman.
His victory lap at a Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana Thursday after cutting a deal with its parent company to keep about 1,100 jobs there that had been slated to move to Mexico was great political theater, complete with grateful workers, happy union officials, backslapping pols, and the usual humble bow from the man himself.
Trump is far from the first politician to bask in the glow of a move like this. I'd swear I heard President Obama and his supporters boast a hundred times about how "General Motors is alive and Bin Laden is dead."
And former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick bragged incessantly about the 800 jobs at Evergreen Solar he kept from moving from Marlboro to China with a $21 million bailout. By the way, they moved to China anyway.
Patrick's failed bet wound up costing about $26,000 per job, while the Carrier tax breaks amount to roughly $5,400. So on one level, Trump's Indiana celebration is warranted. The workers who will keep their jobs certainly think so.
But in the long run, there's less here than meets the eye.
Thirteen-hundred Carrier workers will still lose their jobs. The company is still swearing allegiance to the economic benefits of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. And that $7 million in tax breaks they're getting to ease the pain of keeping workers here? That's barely four-percent of the golden parachute their former CEO walked off with a few years ago.
Yes, those 1,100 jobs are still with us. So are globalization, automation, and corporate greed. The incoming president still has his work cut out for him.