Donald Trump kicked off a victory tour through the Midwest yesterday, swinging through Indiana to trumpet a deal to keep 1,000 manufacturing jobs from relocating to Mexico and addressing a campaign-style mass rally in Ohio.
The president-elect, who upended the US establishment and the world by defeating Hillary Clinton on November 8, made guaranteeing jobs for blue collar American workers a key plank of his presidential campaign.
Casting aside interviews for senior cabinet positions yet to be filled, the maverick tycoon flew out of New York bound for Indiana where he will tour an air conditioning plant that he repeatedly leaned on in public not to ship a planned 2,000 jobs to Mexico.
The 70-year-old billionaire will be accompanied by vice-president-elect Mike Pence, who is winding down his official duties as governor of Indiana and also helped to broker the deal.
“Getting ready to leave for the Great State of Indiana and meet the hard working and wonderful people of Carrier AC,” Trump tweeted.
Carrier, a subsidiary of United Technologies, has announced that it will preserve more than 1,000 jobs and continue to manufacture gas furnaces in Indianapolis, but the precise details of the agreement are unclear.
“The incoming Trump-Pence administration has emphasised to us its commitment to support the business community and create an improved, more competitive US business climate,” said Carrier.
“Incentives” offered by the state were “an important consideration”, it said.
Critics are fearful that workers’ rights may not be adequately protected, or that the deal may embolden other firms to threaten to relocate jobs in exchange for reported tax and regulatory breaks offered to Carrier.
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and prominent Trump critic on the left of American politics, savaged the deal in an op-ed published in the Washington Post yesterday.
“United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country,” he wrote.
“Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe,” Sanders added. “He has signalled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives.”
The Trump transition team has hailed the agreement as a “big win” but declined to flesh out the details when pressed by reporters, saying that it would be down to the president-elect and Carrier to discuss.
But on Wednesday, Anthony Scaramucci, an entrepreneur and member of the Trump team’s executive committee, said “the whole purpose” was to slash corporate tax rates to make it more competitive for US companies to allocate capital at home.
“I’m hoping that every CEO in America is getting that beacon signal from the new Trump administration that we’re open for business here in the US, and we’ve got to get American people back working in American jobs.”
Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s nominated treasury secretary and multi-millionaire former Goldman Sachs banker, said he couldn’t remember the last time a president had made such an intervention with an American chief executive.
“I think it’s terrific,” he told reporters on Wednesday, saying that he and Wilbur Ross, the billionaire nominated as commerce secretary, would be working with Trump to “do the right thing for the American workers”.
Trump has so far peppered top-level administration appointments with billionaires and millionaires, having slammed Clinton for her ties to Wall Street and for amassing a fortune of millions in between stints in public office.
Later, Trump and Pence will travel to Ohio to lead a rally.
Trump was the first Republican nominee for president to win the state since 2004.
Unlike several other swing states it is not scheduling a recount.
The evening event at the home of the Cincinnati Cyclones, which can host more than 17,000 people, is expected to be similar to those that drew enthusiastic crowds of thousands during the campaign.
The transition team has dubbed it a “thank you tour”.
While such rallies are untraditional for a US president-elect, Trump often spoke of the thrill of addressing such enormous crowds during the campaign.
Trump walks up to board his plane at LaGuardia Airport, New York, yesterday. He was headed to Indianapolis, Indiana, to speak to workers at the Carrier factory.
