Labor & Employment Law

Trump: Tax China, Create Jobs in America

By Tula Connell

Donald Trump knows a few things about making money. The first step: You need a job. But a job is something more than 17 million of America’s workers don’t have.

In a recent CNN interview, Trump says one big way this country can create jobs is by heavily taxing China’s exports, which would result in the creation of much-needed manufacturing jobs here at home.

When it comes to manufacturing, China is making all these products. They could be made in North Carolina, they could be made in Alabama, they could be made in lots of our places and right now they’re not.

Personally, I’d tax China because it’s not a free trade country. I would tax China very, very heavily…it would create jobs in this country.

The truth is, if we tax China, fairly substantially…you would have so much money in this country, you wouldn’t have the trade deficits…you have trading deficits that are enormous in the United States….What will happen now, is other areas of the country will start manufacturing products, and that’s what this country needs. (H/t to Alliance for American Manufacturingfor Trump video clip.)

Some 2.4 million U.S. jobs were lost or displaced between 2001 and 2008 because of the U.S. trade deficit with China, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). And high-tech jobs are being outsourced faster than those in any other sector. The Alliance for American Manufacturing has a great chart breaking down this job loss state by state. The map highlights how every state is affected by the U.S. trade deficit with China, like Georgia, which lost 78,000 jobs, nearly 2 percent of its employment.

This country needs 11 million new jobs to get to the level of employment we had before the recession. And there’s no good reason why corporations aren’t creating them. Trump took on the false notion that U.S. tax laws discourage companies from locating here.

I think we’re the most [business] friendly country. This country is so friendly. The biggest problem we have is with China is they’re sucking money out of this country, and the horrible part is that they then loan it back to us. I know lots of folks in China. They think we are the dumbest son of [a blanks] in the world. They think our representatives don’t know what they’re doing. They laugh at us behind our back.

Maybe some of those lawmakers need to remember Trump’s signature phrase: “You’re fired.”

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 15, 2010 (boomark / email).