April, 25 2017, 10:30am EDT
![Public Citizen](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012683/origin.png)
New Report Reveals Trump Is Not Punishing Corporations that Offshore American Jobs, but Awarding Them New Government Contracts
56 Percent of Top U.S. Government Contractors Offshored Jobs
WASHINGTON
Despite President Donald Trump's campaign promises to punish firms that offshore American jobs, the flow of federal contract awards to major offshorers has continued unabated since Trump's inauguration, according to a new report released today by Good Jobs Nation and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. The report, titled "Trump's First 100 Days: Federal Contracting with Corporate Offshorers Continues," reveals that a majority of the largest U.S. government contractors ship jobs overseas. Even after United Technology decided to offshore 1200 of its 2000 Indiana Carrier jobs to Mexico despite Trump's interventions, the firm has obtained 15 new federal government contracts since Inauguration Day.
Key findings of the study include:
- 56 percent of the top 50 federal contractors in FY 2016 were certified under just one narrow U.S. government program as having engaged in offshoring, and 41 percent of the top 100 FY 2016 contractors were certified as having offshored jobs.
- The top federal contractors certified as having offshored jobs received $176 billion in contracts in 2016, which accounts for more than a third of total contract spending for that year.
- Since Trump's inauguration, the flow of federal contract awards to major offshorers has continued, with United Technologies, for instance, receiving 15 new awards and General Electric obtaining scores more.
Read the full report here.
"Our analysis proves that Donald Trump is not fulfilling his signature campaign promises to stop offshoring and bring back American jobs. Even though he's signed over 60 executive orders during his first 100 days, he has yet to use the power of the pen to stop corporations that receive taxpayer dollars from shipping American jobs overseas," said Joseph Geevarghese, director of Good Jobs Nation.
"After pledging to punish companies that offshore American jobs, Trump has not even used his expansive unilateral authority to ban offshorers from being awarded lucrative government contracts. Instead of delivering on his promises to end offshoring and create American jobs, Trump is rewarding companies that offshore with big contracts paid by our tax dollars. He has not introduced the End Offshoring Act or launched the NAFTA renegotiations he promised for his first 100 days, and he caved on taking tough actions to reduce our huge job-killing China trade deficit," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
"It's disgusting that companies like T-Mobile get taxpayer money at the same time they're sending thousands of jobs abroad," said Jamone Ross, a former call center worker for T-Mobile in Texas, who lost his job in 2012 along with 500 co-workers when T-Mobile shifted their work to Asia and Honduras. "When I lost my job I'd just gotten married and bought a house. Thanks to T-Mobile, I spent the first year of my marriage taking out loans to keep up my mortgage payments, and the next year digging myself out of debt. Friends of mine lost their cars and their apartments. If Trump really cares about American workers, like he says, he should stop this, right now."
U.S. presidents have broad executive authority to enact "policies and directives" for federal contracting. Trump has failed to exercise this authority to cut off firms that offshore from obtaining lucrative government contracts paid with taxpayers funds.
The report highlights that Trump appeared willing to flex his muscle as "purchaser-in-chief" right after the 2016 election with his high-profile interventions to try to prevent United Technologies, a major defense contractor, from shipping its Carrier subsidiary's operations to Mexico. However, the study finds that since then Trump not only has failed to take promised actions, such as introducing and "fight[ing] for passage within the first 100 days of my Administration" of a Stop Offshoring Act in his first 100 days, but his administration has approved lucrative contracts with some of the nation's most notorious chronic offshoring corporations.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
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Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
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The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
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In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
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Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
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Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
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