White House downplays Trump Carrier announcement
The White House on Wednesday scoffed at President-elect Donald Trump’s agreement to keep 1,000 manufacturing jobs in Indiana, saying it does not come close to President Obama’s “high standard” for creating similar jobs.
{mosads}Obama spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged it’s “good news” that Trump’s team persuaded air conditioning company Carrier to change its plan to ship those jobs to Mexico.
But he added that “if [Trump] is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record number of manufacturing jobs” created during Obama’s eight years in office.
Earnest went further, saying that the roughly 800,000 jobs he cited were new jobs created under Obama’s watch. He said the president protected “more than a million” additional manufacturing jobs in the Midwest with his bailout of the auto industry.
“The one difference would be the president-elect is talking about protecting jobs,” he said. “The metric I’m using is actually creating jobs.”
Trump is championing the deal with Carrier as an example of how he’s following through on his promise to save jobs in the industrial Midwest.
The president-elect is scheduled to travel to Indiana on Thursday to celebrate the news.
At the same time, the White House is hoping to burnish Obama’s economic legacy on its way out the door.
Trump repeatedly attacked Obama’s handling of the economy on the campaign trail, saying blue-collar workers were left behind as the country dug out of the 2008 recession.
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