Yesterday:
Today:
So which is it? Harley Davidson jilted you because of tariffs, or Harley Davidson was always bad?
Is that what you call the retaliatory tariffs - "getting them to reduce and eliminate tariffs"?
And since they do, they've calculated the outcome and gone with their best financial option. They're not closing all their US plants. They'll still sell here without tariffs. I'm sure they aren't making a rash, impetuous move without having done all the calculations, like someone I could mention. Other companies to follow suit, I'm sure.
Harley Davidson played him and he's pissed.
And after those nice photo ops, too.
So much winning. Trade wars are easy.
Harley-Davidson is an American symbol, and President Trump has trotted it out as an example of business success. But as it’s getting its tax cut, it’s outsourcing jobs and paying shareholders.
[...]
In September 2017, House Speaker Paul Ryan traveled to a Harley-Davidson plant in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, to tout the Republican tax bill, which President Trump would sign later that year. “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs here in America,” Ryan told workers and company leaders.
[...]
Trump in February 2017 met with Harley-Davidson executives and union representatives at the White House. He thanked the company for building in America and predicted its operations would grow.
“I think you’re going to even expand — I know your business is now doing very well, and there’s a lot of spirit right now in the country that you weren’t having so much in the last number of months that you have right now,” Trump said. He added that impending changes to “taxing policies,” health care, tariffs, and trade would only make things better.
[...]
The company estimates its effective tax rate — the amount it pays — will be 23.5 percent to 25 percent this year, about 10 percentage points lower than it would have been without the tax bill.
[...]
Just over a month after Trump signed the tax cuts into law, the Kansas City closure was announced. Workers found out when they arrived at the plant that morning.
[...]
The company will cut 800 jobs at the Kansas City plant when it closes by the fall of 2019 and says it expects to add 450 full-time, casual, and contractor positions in its York facility — a net loss of 350 jobs.
[...]
Meanwhile, Harley-Davidson is opening up a plant in Thailand, where it plans to start production later this year.
[...]
IAM President Robert Martinez Jr. sent a letter to the White House asking him to save the Kansas City facility in March.
[...]
An IAM spokesperson said Martinez met with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on April 11 about the Harley closure, and he promised to follow up with the company’s CEO. The union had not received an official response from the president.
[...]
Since Harley-Davidson announced its Kansas City plant closure in January, Trump — who made a big deal of saving jobs at a Carrier plant in Indiana in 2016 — hasn’t had anything to say about it, even when asked.
Vox
He has now.
"American motorcyles ... and cars ... are much better now
because of international competition. ... Donald Trump
understands none of that. To him, international trade has no
complexities and no surprising unanticipated consequences.
... There is no one working at a Harley Davidson factory that
doesn't understand international trade better than the president
of the United States." (
video)
Sad!
UPDATE:
He's still on his rant. They made him look like the fool he is, and now he's "hitting back".
