Bet: He won't go

And he'll nasty-tweet Ford Motor Company.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trade wars are good and easy to win

Jim Hackett, Ford’s CEO, is working to engineer a $25.5 billion restructuring of the automaker, hoping to cut costs and remain competitive, the Wall Street Journal reports. But auto sales are down [and its stock is down 29%], and one reason is the trade tariffs that Trump has imposed on metals and other goods. According to Bloomberg, Hackett has said they have already cost the company $1 billion in profit and could do “more damage” if the disputes aren’t resolved quickly.

Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker by sales, is making aggressive job cuts as part of that reorganization, NBC News reported. While the company hasn’t said how many jobs will be lost, a report from Morgan Stanley estimates “a global headcount reduction of approximately 12 percent,” or 24,000 of Ford’s 202,000 workers worldwide.”

  Fortune

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooops

Ford won’t be moving production of a hatchback wagon to the United States from China — despite President Donald Trump’s claim Sunday that his taxes on Chinese imports mean the Focus Active can be built in America.

Citing Trump’s new tariffs, Ford on Aug. 31 said it was dropping plans to ship the Focus Active from China to America.

Trump took to Twitter Sunday to declare victory and write: “This is just the beginning. This car can now be BUILT IN THE U.S.A. and Ford will pay no tariffs!”

  TPM

As if there wouldn't be any resulting increase in costs of materials and labor in the US.

Ford said “it would not be profitable to build the Focus Active in the U.S.” given forecast yearly sales below 50,000.

For now, that means Ford simply won’t sell the vehicle in the United States.

Trump is such a simpleton. Or else he just figures his base voters are.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ford Motors was smarter than some others

Ford turned down Cohen's "offer" of "consulting work".

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly probed outreach by President Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen to Ford Motor Co. in January 2017 offering consulting services, an offer that was rejected.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Cohen approached the company's office in Washington, D.C., over the phone to discuss possible consulting work, but was rejected by Ford’s head of government affairs, Ziad Ojakli.

Ojakli has since been interviewed by Mueller's team about his interactions with Cohen and investigators have requested emails and records from the company, the Journal reported.

  The Hill

Like Caputo said, Mueller knows everything.  There is no way Trump could testify without getting caught.

The Times confirms Avenatti's claims

The Times’s review of financial records confirmed much of what was in Mr. Avenatti’s report.

[...]

A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

[...]

Transactions adding up to at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.

Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch.

[...]

The payments by Columbus Nova occurred between January and August of last year. Andrew Intrater, the company’s American chief executive and Mr. Vekselberg’s cousin, donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inaugruation, campaign finance records show. He and Mr. Vekselberg attended the event together and met with Mr. Cohen there, according to a person briefed on the matter. Columbus Nova retained him as a consultant soon afterward.

[...]

A lawyer for Columbus Nova, in a statement on Tuesday, described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.

Other transactions described in the financial records include hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from Fortune 500 firms with business before the Trump administration, as well as smaller amounts he paid for luxury expenses like a Mercedes-Benz and private club dues.

  NYT

Jesus, he couldn't even set up separate accounts? Sounds an awful lot like a slush fund for pretty much everything they didn't want public.

The financial records indicate that at least some of the money that passed through the company was from sources and in amounts that were inconsistent with its stated purpose.

[...]

Most of the transactions involved two banks: First Republic Bank and City National Bank.

[...]

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Mr. Cohen for possible bank fraud and election-law violations, among other matters, according to people briefed on the investigation.

P.S. The Daily Beast also confirmed.

UPDATE 5/11:







Doesn't change the fact that Cohen was taking money from AT&T on the expectation that it would make its way to a favorable deal.



He's new.  He'll get his facts straight.

UPDATE:



UPDATE 5/12:

Ford Motor Co. was smart enough to turn down Cohen's "offer" of "consulting work".

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

The Trump Way.

Following up on that AP article laying out some of the many things Trump has claimed to have accomplished when he hasn't, here's another on. Remember the great Carrier deal?

Flashback:

The incoming Trump Administration and United Technologies (UTX) have reached an agreement that will keep close to 1,000 jobs at Carrier Corp., which is owned by UTX, in Indiana.

Carrier had planned to move production from a key factory in that state to Mexico, taking with it the roughly 1,400 jobs of those who work at the Indiana plant.

[...]

Under a deal negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence and UTX CEO Greg Hayes, the company will now keep most of those jobs in Indiana, sources close to the matter told CNBC.

While terms of the deal are not yet clear, the sources indicated there were new incentives on offer from the state of Indiana, where Pence is governor, that helped clear a path for the agreement.

  CNBC

Fast forward:

More than 600 employees at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis are bracing for layoffs beginning next month, despite being told by President Trump that nearly all the jobs at the plant had been saved. The deal, announced with great fanfare before Trump took office, was billed not only as a heroic move to keep jobs from going to Mexico but also as a seismic shift in the economic development landscape.

Nearly seven months later the deal has not worked out quite as originally advertised, and the landscape has barely budged.

"The jobs are still leaving," said Robert James, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999. "Nothing has stopped."

[...]

The agreement does guarantee that Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp., will continue to employ at least 1,069 people at the Indianapolis plant for 10 years in exchange for up to $7 million in incentives. In addition, the company has promised to invest $16 million in the facility.

But fewer than 800 of those 1,069 jobs — 730 to be exact — are the manufacturing jobs that were always at the heart of the debate. The rest are engineering and technical jobs that were never scheduled to be cut.

[...]

As for Trump's claim that the $16 million investment in the plant would add jobs, United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes told CNBC in December that the money would go toward more automation in the factory and ultimately would result in fewer jobs.

[...]

Hayes said the laid-off workers would be offered jobs at other factories across the country.

"We're going to be hiring something like 5,000 people this year," he said.

But union officials say they have heard nothing from the company about any job offers elsewhere within the company. All they have received is the official notice, as required by federal law, that the first round of cuts — 338 jobs — will take place on July 20, with an additional 290 employees terminated on Dec. 22, three days before Christmas.

[...]

[E]xperts, business leaders and economic development officials agree very little has changed since then. Ford announced this week that production for its next-generation Focus is being moved out of Kentucky, and will be going to one of Ford's existing plants in China. Trump took credit when Ford announced earlier this year that a factory planned for Mexico to build the car was being canceled.

[...]

"If companies know they can do it and get money that's laying around on tables, money that's there for the taking, that hurts the tax base," said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., watchdog group that is critical of state subsidies to business.

LeRoy estimates state and local governments are spending at least $70 billion a year on incentives. He says the money states are spending to lure companies like Carrier and others could be better spent on schools, infrastructure, training "and all the things that really do grow the economy over the long run, because they benefit all employers, not just those few that can game the system."

  CNBC

This, apparently, is the way things are going to go. He's going to lurch from photo op to rally to photo op, proclaim victory over something, celebrate his own greatness, and then move on to whatever the next thing is. It's the George Aiken Victory In Vietnam strategy toward governing the entire country: Declare victory and then get out. Nothing is real, except in the immediate moment, when the cameras are hot and the ovations, rapturous. Actual results are irrelevant. Carrier didn't count at the very moment he went wheels up in Indianapolis.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.


UPDATE 1/12/18:  Still laying people off

Thanks Be to Trump

UPDATE:  The "catch"



Original post:

Ford Motor, which had been bashed by Donald Trump for shipping jobs outside the U.S., announced Tuesday that it will cancel production of a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico, and will instead invest $700 million in Flat Rock, Michigan.

[...]

Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr. said he spoke with President-elect Trump on Tuesday morning to tell him of the decision to invest in the U.S. and cancel the Mexico plant, according to Reuters.

  CNBC

Can't wait for the Tweet horn toot from the Inflatable Trump Rooster.

And yet...

The company said it will continue to build its Focus at an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, to improve company profitability.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Didn't have to wait, after all.

"@DanScavino: Ford to scrap Mexico plant, invest in Michigan due to Trump policies"https://t.co/137nUo03Gl

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017

Trump Just Got a Boost in the Polls

Ford Motor Co. says it's moving all of its U.S. small car production to Mexico.

Ford CEO Mark Fields confirmed the long-expected move Wednesday during an event for investors and Wall Street analysts.

Ford currently makes its Fiesta subcompact in Mexico, but its Focus and C-Max small cars are made in suburban Detroit. Making them in Mexico would boost company profits because of low wages there.

  Big Story

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.