Trump Gave UT More Lucrative Govt Contracts Despite Offshoring
Huffington Post
United Technologies Just Got More Lucrative Government Contracts After Offshoring 1,000 Carrier Jobs to Mexico
04/25/2017 10:14 am ET Lori Wallach, Contributor Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director
Why Isn’t Trump Even Doing the Obvious to Stop Job Offshoring?
United Technologies, the firm President Donald Trump spotlighted with his threat to punish companies offshoring jobs, is moving more than 1,000 of its Indiana Carrier jobs to Mexico despite Trump’s intervention. Instead of punishment, since Inauguration Day the major defense contractor has been awarded new lucrative government contracts.
Really. Fifteen new contracts.
Cutting off firms from obtaining lucrative government contracts paid with taxpayers’ funds should be a no-brainer for a president who pledged to fight offshoring. And it’s much easier than the things Trump pledged to do and has not: slap taxes on the goods offshoring firms ship back here and introduce and move in his first 100 days an “End the Offshoring Act.”
Public Citizen and Good Jobs Nation dug through two massive government databases to investigate whether UT was a fluke, or many of the nation’s major contractors are offshoring. The findings in a new report we released today are infuriating:
· Fifty-six percent of the top 50 federal contractors in fiscal year 2016 were certified under just one narrow U.S. government program as having engaged in offshoring
· Forty-one of the top 100 FY 2016 contractors were certified as having offshored jobs. Those firms received a shopping $176 billion in taxpayer funded contracts in 2016, which adds up to more than a third of total contract spending for that year.
· Not only UT, but chronic job offshorer General Electric has obtained new lucrative contracts since Trump entered the White House. GE has offshored the largest number of jobs of any of the top 50 federal contractors, more than 8,700.
Trump’s inaction on this front is perverse given procurement policy is one of the most effective tools Trump has to counter offshoring. The U.S. government has a long tradition of using its contract spending – which currently adds up to $470 billion per year – to promote national policy goals. A share of federal government contracts must be awarded to small businesses and women- and minority-owned firms, and to qualify for government construction projects, firms must agree to pay workers prevailing wages.
And a U.S. president also has broad powers to enact “policies and directives” for federal contracting without congressional legislation….
READ REST OF PIECE AT: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58ff585be4b047ce3ee27c04
Lori Wallach
Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
215 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003 USA
(1) 202-454-5107 fax (1)202-547-7392
Skype lori_wallach