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Originally Posted by wjboyer1
The economic instability after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks helped fuel a rise in the unemployment rate. It declined in June 2003 through the summer and fall of 2007 before rising sharply in 2008, peaking at 7.8 percent at the time Bush left office. Congress had nothing to do with the economic collapse, Wall Street was the culprit. US economy was floating on the tech bubble, which happened to pop while Bush was in office. And near the end of Bush's second term, deep structural problems in the economy and global fears fueled the recession.President George W. Bush inherited 4.2 percent unemployment in January 2001. That rate had grown to 7.8 percent when he left office eight years later and hit 8.3 percent in the first full month of Obama's presidency.
When Obama assumed office, the unemployment rate was still rising sharply. It topped out at 10 percent in October 2009, hovering just below that level for the next year, before beginning a steady decline at the end of 2010 that has persisted into early-2016 and breaking through the 5 percent mark at the beginning of 2016.
President Trump Likes Taking Credit for Jobs. Here Are the Facts: fortune.com/2017/03/29/president-trump-job-claims-fact-check/
The facts: Trump offered no further details or evidence for his claim that "millions of jobs" were created, and nothing happened during his trip that could come close to backing up such an assertion.
Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia last week. As part of the deal, which still needs approval from Congress, Saudi Arabia "expressed its intent" to spend $28 billion on defense technologies and programs by Lockheed Martin, which estimated the deal would support 18,000 jobs in the U.S. over 30 years — a figure that falls dramatically below Trump's estimate.
"Once fully realized, the programs in this announcement will support more than 18,000 highly skilled jobs in the U.S. and thousands of jobs in Saudi Arabia as part of maintaining and modernizing these platforms over the next 30 years," Lockheed Martin said in a statement on May 20.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 533,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy during the months of January, February and March in 2017. While that number is lower than Trump's estimation, it's also important to note that Trump's term did not begin until noon on Jan. 20, which means he can't accurately claim credit for all 216,000 jobs created in January. In February and March, alone, 317,000 jobs were created — a more accurate measure of Trump's influence.
Toyota said April 10 that it would invest $1.3 billion in its plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. But the move is part of a previously announced plan to invest $10 billion in the U.S. The investment also will not create new jobs, though Toyota highlighted the previously announced addition of 700 jobs at the plant. When asked if the Trump administration's policies affected Toyota's decision, a company spokesperson told the New York Times they had not. "No, but we do share his goal of growing the economy and jobs in the U.S.," company spokesperson Scott Vazin said. The company's update on April 10 came after Trump criticized Toyota and threatened the automaker with a "big border tax" if it followed through on plans to build a plant in Mexico.
Ford said it will invest $1.2 billion in three manufacturing facilities in Michigan — a plan that will create or retain 130 jobs at one of the plants. But as Reuters reported, the project is part of a 2015 negotiation with the United Auto Workers union — not a direct result of Trump's recent meeting with auto executives. Tuesday's announcement introduced new details about the previously planned investment. "These Michigan Assembly Plant and Romeo Engine plant announcements are consistent with what we agreed to and talked about with the UAW in 2015 negotiations," Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of the Americas, told the Detroit Free Press.
While Charter CEO Tom Rutledge credited the "right regulatory climate and right tax climate" for the investment, the company had already announced its intention to add 20,000 jobs in May 2016. The recent announcement at the White House included more specific details about the commitment. "In connection with our transactions with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks last year, we reaffirmed this resolve, stating that we expected to hire 20,000 new employees at Charter, many in customer service," the company said in a statement on March 24. "Today at the White House we announced the next steps in advancing our efforts to grow our in-house and insourced workforce."
General Motors did, in fact, announce the addition or retention of 900 jobs. As the Detroit Free Press noted, many of those jobs might go to 1,000 people who were recently laid off from the company’s Lansing Delta Township plant. GM did not give direct credit to Trump, but in a statement, CEO Mary Barra said the announcement is, in part, a reflection of the company’s confidence in the future of the U.S. economy. “The job commitments announced today demonstrate the confidence we have in our products, our people and an overall positive outlook for the auto industry and the U.S. economy,” she said in a statement.
This 10-year investment by Exxon, which focuses on 11 natural gas projects, began in 2013 and is expected to continue through 2022, the company said. That means it was in the works long before Trump was elected president. Still, in a statement released by the White House, Exxon CEO Darren Woods thanked Trump for his commitment to growing business. “Investments of this scale require a pro-growth approach and a stable regulatory environment and we appreciate the President’s commitment to both,” Woods said.
It’s true that on Jan. 17, General Motors announced it would invest $1 billion in U.S. factories in 2017, creating or retaining 1,500 jobs. But General Motors spokeswoman Joanne Krell told Reuters the investment "had been in the works for some time,” so Trump’s claim that the initiative was entirely dependent on his election is inaccurate.
While Trump took credit for Walmart’s announcement — and thanked the retailer "for starting the big jobs push back into the U.S." — Walmart had already announced in October a plan that would create 10,000 U.S. jobs, Reuters reported.
Trump’s details about Fiat’s investment in Ohio and Michigan plants — announced on Jan. 8 — are correct. But Fiat said the investment was the next phase of a previously announced plan, describing it as a “continuation of the efforts already underway to increase production capacity in the U.S. on trucks and SUVs to match demand.” The company downplayed the President’s influence on the deal. “We don’t make investment decisions based on risk of a tweet,” CEO Sergio Marchionne said, according to Bloomberg, while still thanking Trump. “We owed the country this investment,” he said.
Standing beside Trump in the Oval Office on Feb. 8, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced a $7 billion investment to complete the company’s new Arizona factory, which will “employ approximately 3,000 direct high-paying, high-wage, high-tech jobs at its peak, and over 10,000 people in the Arizona area in support of the factory.” Asked at the time how long he had been planning the investment, Krzanich said, “We've been working on this factory for several years. We held off actually doing this investment until now.” He gave credit to the Trump Administration’s tax and regulatory policies. But in 2011, Intel made a $5 billion investment to begin building the same Arizona factory, announcing the plans during a visit from then-President Barack Obama. The company later halted construction due to lack of demand for the product, an Intel spokesman told CNN Money. The spokesman said the more recent investment comes as the company expects demand to increase again.
A spokeswoman for Amgen confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the company plans to hire 1,600 people across the U.S. in 2017 — some of which will be new positions and some of which will make up for attrition. This comes after the company announced in 2014 that it would cut 2,900 jobs, Bloomberg reported.
Most of these investment initiatives were in the works before Trump was elected. As Factcheck.org has pointed out, there are no Lockheed Martin jobs “coming back” to the United States, but there are new jobs being created as part of a contract for more F-35 planes. As for General Motors and Ford, their plans were set in motion before Trump was elected, and the companies said the decisions were not influenced by politics but by market forces.
Trump's tweet followed Ford’s announcement that it would cancel plans to build a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico, saying it would invest $4.5 billion in building electric cars in the U.S. — which will add 700 new jobs. Ford’s CEO explained the move by pointing to decreasing demand for small cars, which the Mexico plant would have built. He noted that he expects there to be a “more positive U.S. manufacturing business environment under President-elect Trump,” but he said he “absolutely” would have done the same thing if Trump had not been elected. Notably, this is a different Ford plant in Mexico than the two plants that Trump repeatedly criticized on the campaign trail. The $2.6 billion plan for those plants remains intact.
This was the result of a previous announcement. Sprint initially said that these jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000-job commitment by Japan’s SoftBank — which owns about 80% of Sprint. While Sprint’s CEO said it had “nothing to do with previously announced Sprint initiatives," it appears that only the details of the initiative were new in December. The 5,000 Sprint jobs were still part of the total 50,000 pledge, as were the 3,000 OneWeb jobs.
Son told the Wall Street Journal that this money will come from a $100 billion technology investment fund that he announced in October 2016, before Trump's election. His specific pledge to create 50,000 American jobs came in December, but plans for the investment preceded Trump’s involvement, even though he claimed full credit.
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06-03-2017, 05:08 PM
