Tag: jobs

Trump lied about an Apple plant opening and Tim Cook didn’t correct him

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg raised eyebrows this week after a new report that he had a private dinner with President Donald Trump in October, the second closed-door meeting between the pair in a month. But Zuckerberg is hardly the only tech executive trying to curry favor with the president: Apple’s Tim Cook is doing something similar, and unlike the Facebook executive, he’s doing it out in the open.

Remember Tim Apple — the alter ego Trump created for the Apple CEO earlier this year? Well, he’s struck again. And he’s letting the president blatantly lie about the goings-on at his company in order to use Apple as a marketing tool for his presidency.

On Wednesday, Cook accompanied Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, on a tour of a manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. Both at the plant and after, the president suggested that the plant had just opened and that it was the result of his presidency. No one at Apple corrected him, even though it’s not at all the case: The plant, which is run by a company called Flex, has been making Mac Pro computers there since 2013.

“For me, this is a very special day,” Trump said on the factory tour, apparently indicating the plant had just opened. Cook spoke after him and didn’t clarify what was going on, instead thanking the Trump administration, particularly those in attendance. “I’m grateful for their support and pulling today off and getting us to — this far. It would not be possible without them,” he said.

You could argue that Cook wasn’t quite sure that the president was saying the plant had just opened. Also on Wednesday, Apple announced the start of construction on a new office campus in Austin, so maybe Trump was referring to that. (Also, Apple building a new campus in Texas is good!)

But later in the day, it became abundantly clear that Trump was, in fact, making up a plant opening — and Apple still isn’t saying a word about it. On Wednesday evening, Trump tweeted out a campaign video of himself with Cook at the plant and wrote that he had “opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas” that day. But it’s just not true.

It’s not new for Trump to lie; he does it a lot. But for one of the most valuable companies in the world to allow itself to be used as part of a false marketing campaign from the president of the United States is, to put it lightly, not great.

Apple did not return multiple requests for comment on the matter and Cook hasn’t commented on it publicly. He could do so easily, even from his Twitter account, which he used to tout the plant’s launch when it first started shipping back in 2013.

Tariffs are why Tim Cook is letting this slide from Trump

Cook isn’t letting Trump make things up about Apple because he’s polite — it’s because, business-wise, it’s advantageous for him to do it, particularly in the context of the trade war with China.

Trump has consistently pushed Apple to manufacture more of its products in the US, even though some of his policies have made it harder for them to do. As Jack Nicas at the New York Times lays out, Apple and the White House have been going back and forth for months over where the company’s new Mac Pro will be made. Apple says it needs waivers on the tariffs to make it in Texas, and Trump initially said no but eventually gave in. And so, the computers are shipping from the US, complete with an “Assembled in USA” tag.

Cook knows that’s what matters to Trump — and was sure to emphasize it on the manufacturing tour on Wednesday.

“We cannot be more proud of the product,” he said. “It’s an example of American design, American manufacturing, and American ingenuity.”

Tim Cook sometimes criticizes the White House. Other times, he looks like its chief marketing officer.

Cook and Trump have at times had an adversarial relationship, but as time has gone on, they’ve leaned into the mutually beneficial parts of their dynamic instead.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump called for a boycott of Apple, and he has consistently pressured it to make more of its products in the United States. After Trump was elected, Cook sent a memo to Apple employees that didn’t directly mention the president but took a clear stance against his divisiveness. Cook has criticized Trump’s immigration policies and been vocal on family separation. Apple also warned early on that Trump’s tariffs might force it to raise prices.

But whatever their differences, they haven’t kept Cook from Trump’s orbit. He’s met with the president in the White House and done public events with Ivanka Trump and the president. He sits on a workforce policy advisory board to the president.

In one meeting at the White House earlier this year, the president mistakenly referred to Cook as “Tim Apple.” It was an admittedly funny moment, and afterward, Cook played along, changing his Twitter name to Tim and the Apple logo. (He’s since changed it back.) Trump, on the other hand, lied and insisted he hadn’t made the mistake.

Cook appears to have decided that while he might not agree with the more unsavory parts of Trump’s presidency, there’s a lot the company he runs has to gain from it.

The tax cut bill Trump signed in 2017 has been a huge windfall for Apple. It allowed the company to bring back billions of dollars in cash it had stashed abroad, save billions of dollars in taxes, and return billions of dollars in savings to its shareholders via stock buybacks. Apple has delivered public thank-yous to Trump with splashy announcements about investments in the US, which Trump name-checked during his 2018 State of the Union address. Call it some mutual free advertising.

So sure, it’s easy to be mad at Zuckerberg for having dinner with Trump (which is honestly not that big of a deal, especially in comparison to letting Trump lie in campaign ads, or, you know, having built a platform that’s being used to do enormous damage to democracy). But we shouldn’t just let Cook slide. He is at the helm of an iconic American brand in Apple, and he’s lending it to Trump, who’s using it to make false claims to boost his presidency.

[Vox]

Donald Trump lies of 303,000 new jobs, more than twice the actual number

Economists were scratching their heads after President Trump tweeted about a “blowout” 303,000 jobs that the economy added in October, more than twice the 128,000 that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported early Friday.

“Wow, a blowout JOBS number just out, adjusted for revisions and the General Motors strike, 303,000,” Trump tweeted. “This is far greater than expectations. USA ROCKS!”

Chris Lu, the former deputy secretary of labor for President Barack Obama, tweeted that Trump had “reached a new low and is making up fake numbers.”

Even though Trump’s comments about the jobs numbers included caveats about revisions and the GM strike, economists were still puzzling over his math.

“What the president said today is not tethered to any empirical reality,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist of RSM.

For one thing, Trump’s number throws in the 95,000 in upward revisions of job gains in August and September. Economist Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase says he typically doesn’t consider prior months’ revisions as part of the latest monthly tally. But Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist of High Frequency Economics, says it’s not unreasonable to include the upgrade since it does add to total U.S. payrolls.

Keep in mind, however, that when Trump has touted past strong jobs reports, he hasn’t highlighted any downward revisions to previous months.

The GM strike, meanwhile, idled 46,000 workers, BLS has said. BLS said Friday that motor vehicles and parts manufacturing lost 42,000 workers in October, suggesting it would have added 4,000 if not for the strike.

But wait. Economists expected the motor vehicle industry to lose another 10,000 to 12,000 jobs because of the strike’s ripple effect on auto suppliers, pushing the GM strike toll to as much as 58,000 jobs. Tomas Philipson, who chairs the Council of Economic Advisers, reckoned an even bigger impact on auto suppliers that nudged the GM effect to 60,000.

As a result, the White House is saying: But for the strike, total U.S. employment would have been 60,000 higher, so let’s add that to the October count.

Yet O’Sullivan says it doesn’t appear there was any noticeable effect of the strike on auto suppliers. Philipson’s math indicates the auto industry would have added about 20,000 jobs if not for the strike. But over the past six months, the sector has lost an average 2,000 jobs a month and didn’t gain more than 2,000 in any single month, O’Sullivan notes.

During an interview on Fox Business Network, Larry Kudlow, head of the National Economic Council, also cited the October layoffs of 20,000 temporary workers for the 2020 census. That, he said, should be added to the hypothetical scenario that doesn’t include GM or census effects.

So if we add the 95,000 jobs from prior months’ revisions, the 60,000 GM-related jobs and the 20,000 census jobs to the 128,000 total, voila – we get 303,000.

[USA Today]

Trump urges GM CEO Mary Barra to reopen or sell Lordstown, Ohio auto plant

President Donald Trump is pressuring General Motors to reopen the Lordstown, Ohio manufacturing plant that recently closed and put 1,700 people out of work. The president issued a series of tweets over the weekend and on Monday morning, urging GM to immediately begin discussions with the auto union.

Mr. Trump tweeted over the weekend and through Monday morning about his frustration with the plant’s closure, claiming that “car companies are all coming back to the U.S.” and touting the U.S. economy as “the envy of all.” On Sunday night, he disclosed in a tweet that he had vented his frustrations during a conversation with the company’s CEO, Mary Barra.

“I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union — I don’t care, I just want it open!”

The union is the United Automobile Workers, which represents the employees who lost their jobs in the Lordstown closure. Trump had previously told a UAW leader, David Green, to “get his act together and produce” for the Lordstown workers. Green didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Workers at the Lordstown plant worked their last shift earlier this month. More than 3,300 hourly workers were laid off indefinitely, representing about 7 percent of GM’s hourly U.S. employees. The cuts come as the automaker enjoyed a near-record $12 billion profit last year.

On Monday morning, Mr. Trump reiterated his support for the Lordstown plant to reopen quickly.

“General Motors and the UAW are going to start ‘talks’ in September/October. Why wait, start them now!,” he tweeted. “I want jobs to stay in the U.S.A. and want Lordstown (Ohio), in one of the best economies in our history, opened or sold to a company who will open it up fast!”

[CBS News]

Trump blasts Fed chair over stock market slide, GM layoffs

President Trump on Tuesday blamed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for a string of negative economic developments, including the stock market’s recent slide and General Motors’s plan to shutter U.S. factories and lay off thousands of workers.
“I’m doing deals and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
The comments mark an escalation of Trump’s criticism of Powell, whom he nominated last year to lead the central bank, over rising interest rates. They also indicate the president does not believe he bears responsibility for the negative economic news this week.

“So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay,” Trump told the Post. “Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.”
Trump has blasted Powell frequently since July for continuing a series of Fed interest rate hikes that began in December 2015. The Fed has raised rates eight times since the end of 2015, six times during Trump’s term and three times since Powell took over the central bank in February.
Trump is one of few Republican politicians and right-leaning officials opposed to the Fed’s efforts to bring interest rates back toward historically neutral levels. The president says he believes the Fed should keep interest rates low to stimulate the already-strong economy.
Interest rate hikes also suppress stock market gains — Trump’s preferred economic scorecard — by raising the price of borrowing and narrowing corporate profit margins.
U.S. stocks have erased their 2018 gains amid a Wall Street sell-off triggered in part by rising rates, along with fading economic growth and the mounting costs of Trump’s tariffs.
The president, however, expressed confidence that the U.S. economy would not enter a recession.
The president has repeatedly pointed to strong economic growth as evidence his policies, such as tax cuts and deregulation, are working.
GM’s announcement this week that it plans to cut 15 percent of its North American workforce could pose a political threat to Trump heading into the 2020 elections. Two plants it plans to shutter are located in Ohio and Michigan, two states Trump won in 2016.

Trump threatens to cut federal incentives for GM’s electric car

President Trump on Tuesday threatened to end General Motors’s federal tax credit for electric vehicles in retaliation for the company’s planned layoffs.

Trump tweeted that he is “very disappointed” with the company’s plans to close up to five manufacturing plants — four of them in the United States, one in Canada — and lay off about 15 percent of its workforce.

“We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including … for electric cars,” he wrote.

GM’s share price fell on the New York Stock Exchange in the minutes after Trump’s tweet, reaching as low as 3.8 percent below Monday’s closing price.

In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, the automaker said it appreciates “the actions this administration has taken on behalf of industry to improve the overall competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing” and that “many of the U.S. workers impacted” by Monday’s layoff announcement “will have the opportunity to shift to other GM plants.”

“GM is committed to maintaining a strong manufacturing presence in the U.S., as evidenced by our more than $22 billion investments in U.S. operations since 2009. Yesterday’s announcements support our ability to invest for future growth and position the company for long-term success and maintain and grow American jobs,” the company said.

Trump has blasted GM and its CEO, Mary Barra, since the Monday morning layoff announcements and has pledged to take action to prevent the job losses.

It’s unclear what other subsidies might be targeted by Trump, whether he would focus only on GM or end the tax credit altogether. Ending the subsidy would require Congress to pass a new law.

The federal government provides a $7,500 tax break to U.S. consumers who buy electric vehicles. Two GM vehicles qualify for the incentive: the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt and the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt.

Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, on Tuesday also mentioned potentially targeting the electric vehicle credit.

“We are going to be looking at certain subsidies regarding electric cars and others, whether they should apply or not. I can’t say anything final about that, but we’re looking into it,” Kudlow told reporters in a White House briefing before Trump’s tweet.

“Again, that reflects the president’s own disappointment regarding these actions,” he said of the plant closings.

At the same briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was noncommittal on when Trump might make good on his threat.
“I don’t know that there’s a specific timeline,” she said.
“As he said, he’s looking into what those options might look like,” she added. “The president wants to see American companies build cars here in America, not build them overseas, and he is hopeful that GM will continue to do that here.”

As of the third quarter of 2018, GM was less than 4,000 vehicles away from hitting the point at which federal tax credits start to phase out. The phase-out starts when a manufacturer sells 200,000 electric cars.

GM and other automakers are lobbying Congress to lift the 200,000-vehicle limit. Bills in both the House and Senate have been introduced but neither chamber has passed one of the measures.

Support for the tax credit generally falls along party lines, with Democrats in strong support and Republicans opposed. Nonetheless, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who lost his reelection fight earlier this month, is the lead sponsor on one bill to lift the cap on the credit.

[The Hill]

After scathing op-ed, Trump defends leadership by taking credit for Obama’s economic policies

After the publication of a scathingly critical essay purportedly from an anonymous senior administration official, President Donald Trump used a series of morning tweets to defend his leadership, citing strong economic data and praise from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do,” Trump tweeted. “The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow!”

The New York Times published an op-ed Wednesday that it said was from a senior official who described the president as erratic and amoral and said staff worked to thwart “misguided” decisions they feared would be detrimental to the country.

In the hours after the Times posted the story Wednesday afternoon, an angry Trump criticized the newspaper for not identifying the author. He demanded that the Times out him or her and suggested that the person should be investigated.

In a third post, Trump returned to the economy, proclaiming “consumer confidence highest in 18 years, Atlanta Fed forecasts 4.7 GDP, manufacturing jobs highest in many years.”

[USA Today]

Sanders cites inaccurate numbers to claim Trump has created more jobs for African-Americans than Obama

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday cited inaccurate data that she claimed showed President Trump has created hundreds of thousands of more jobs for African-American workers than former President Obama did in his entire term.

Sanders drastically deflated the number of jobs Obama created for African-Americans as part of a broader response to questions about whether Trump had ever used the “N-word.”

Asked if she could guarantee Americans will “never hear” Trump say the racial slur on a recording, Sanders said she “can’t guarantee anything” before highlighting economic gains made under Trump.

“This is a president who is fighting for all Americans, who is putting policies that help all Americans, particularly African-Americans,” Sanders said. “Just look at the economy alone.”

She claimed that the economy has added 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans in Trump’s first 18 months in office, which is accurate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sanders then said Obama only oversaw the creation of 195,000 jobs for African-Americans during his eight years in office.

The latter number is far from accurate. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the economy added roughly 3 million jobs for African-Americans during Obama’s time in office.

Sanders did not immediately respond to questions from The Hill about the inaccurate information, or whether she meant to cite a different timeframe.

Bloomberg first reported on Sanders’s exaggerated answer from the podium.

Tuesday’s press briefing was largely dominated by questions about Trump’s rhetoric toward African-Americans, and particularly toward former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman.

Manigault Newman’s new book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” alleges Trump is a racist and a misogynist. She claims there are tapes of Trump using the “N-word” on the set of “The Apprentice.”

Trump has denied such tapes exist and tweeted Monday night that the racial slur has never been part of his vocabulary. He went on to attack Manigault Newman, who was once the highest ranking black official in his White House, as a “dog,” a “lowlife” and “wacky and deranged.”

[The Hill]

Media

Trump breaks the law and jolts markets by teasing secret jobs numbers

President Donald Trump moved markets and busted norms on Friday morning with a tweet about the May employment report more than an hour before the numbers came out.

The post appeared to skirt strict rules on government employees not commenting on the highly sensitive economic data until an hour after its public release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.

Trump, who received the numbers Thursday night on Air Force One, did not include any of the jobs data in his tweet. But it appeared positive enough to suggest to Wall Street that a good number was coming Friday morning.

“Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” the president tweeted at 7:21 a.m.

And the numbers were in fact quite good, showing a better than expected gain of 223,000 jobs and a dip in unemployment to 3.8 percent, the lowest level since April of 2000, sending Dow futures higher.

But markets were already moving before the release and popped immediately after Trump’s tweet, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note moving higher along with stock market futures. The rise in the 10-year yield suggested traders assumed Trump’s tweet meant the jobs number would be strong and push the Fed to raise interest rates more quickly.

Former Obama administration officials pounced on Trump’s tweet even before the public got to see the numbers, saying it violated rules banning federal employees with access to the jobs data from saying anything at all about it until 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.

The one-hour lag is meant to allow the jobs data—compiled by non-partisan career employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics—to stand on its own without any immediate spin from elected officials.

“We took the one-hour delay 100 percent seriously,” Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, said in an interview. “There were times when there was a good number and they wanted to send the president out to talk about it, but Air Force One was scheduled to leave at 9:15 a.m. and we would tell them to delay the flight until after 9:30 a.m.”

Furman suggested Trump should no longer get the numbers in advance.

[Politico]

Trump Thanks Mary Matalin for Praising His Job Performance by Saying ‘I Can Die Happy Now’

President Trump took to Twitter this morning to thank political commentator Mary Matalinfor recent comments she made praising him.

In an interview last month with PJ Media, Matalin said she can “die happy now” because of how well he’s doing.

She offered him specific praise on tax reform.

It’s unclear why Trump is only just now bringing up the comment from a month ago, but he thanked Matalin for it all the same:

[Mediaite]

Trump re-election campaign releases ad attacking ‘enemies’

The day after racially charged violence gripped Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign released an ad attacking his “enemies” for obstructing his agenda.

The ad slammed Democrats, the media and career politicians for what it said were attacks on and obstruction of Trump’s efforts while touting the President’s record so far of overseeing low levels of unemployment, record-high stock prices and what the ad called “the strongest military in decades.”

“The President’s enemies don’t want him to succeed, but Americans are saying, ‘Let President Trump do his job,'” the ad said.

The Trump campaign did not respond Sunday to requests for more details on the ad, including when and where it will run and how much it cost.

Trump took office following years of decreasing unemployment rates, and those numbers have continued to improve during his time in office. The US economy added more than one million jobs since Trump was elected. The stock market has reached record heights by some measures as well, continuing a trend since recovering from the Great Recession, with a strong increase since the November election.

The release of the Trump campaign’s new ad comes as the President continues to receive criticism for his statements Saturday in response to the violence that wracked Charlottesville over the weekend.

White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville and clashed with counterprotesters Saturday, violence that culminated in a man driving a car into a crowd, killing a woman and injuring 19 others. Two Virginia state troopers died the same day in a helicopter crash while assisting the city’s response to the violence.

Trump gave a statement Saturday condemning the violence and bigotry “on many sides” and touted his own record, including low levels of unemployment and announcements by companies such as Foxconn, an electronic components manufacturer headquartered in Taiwan, which plans to increase production in the US.

“We have so many incredible things happening in our country, so when I watch Charlottesville, to me, it’s very, very sad,” Trump said.

But in his remarks, Trump did not single out white supremacists as responsible for the violence, drawing criticism from some congressional leaders within his own party.

On Sunday, the White House offered a statement on background claiming the President’s remarks included a condemnation of white supremacy and “all extremist groups.”

Senior administration officials said Sunday that Trump was referring to white supremacist groups in his remarks.

Pressed on “State of the Union” about the President’s position towards the white supremacists, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert offered a condemnation of all hate groups and said Trump felt the same way.

“I condemn white supremacists and racists and white Nazi groups and all the other groups that espouse this kind of hatred,” Bossert said.

When asked by on NBC’s “Meet the Press” why Trump did not single-out the neo-Nazis or white supremacists in his comments, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said: “When he condemned bigotry and hatred on all sides, that includes white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and I think it’s clear. I know it’s clear in his mind.”

Trump declared his intention to run for re-election at the very beginning of his presidency and in recent months has taken part in several campaign events, including holding a $35,000-per-seat fundraiser in June.

[CNN]

Reality

The ad makes several claims.

  • 1 million jobs created
  • Unemployment: Lowest since 2001
  • Stock Market: All time record highs
  • The strongest military

Except these trends all existed before Donald Trump took office. The same time last year 1.2 million jobs were created, Obama took unemployment from 10 percent in 2009 to 4.9 percent in 2017, and he took the stock market from 7,949.09 in 2009 to 19,732 when he left office. And we have a larger military than the next 6 countries combined.

Donald Trump really can’t take much credit for any of these claims.

Media

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