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Trump Just Bragged About Chrysler’s New U.S. Plant. Chrysler’s Response Is Perfect

Trump Just Bragged About Chrysler’s New U.S. Plant. Chrysler’s Response Is Perfect

Donald Trump’s continuous attempts to portray himself as a magical job-creator continue unabated. Today, he took to Twitter to announce that Fiat Chrysler was going to be creating jobs in the United States, implying that he was responsible for this decision.

Of course, as usual, Trump had absolutely nothing to do with this. “This plan was in the works back in 2015. This announcement…was just final confirmation” said Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) spokeswoman Jodi Tinson to ThinkProgress’s Bryce Covert. She confirmed that politics and the election had nothing to do with the announcement.

In September 2015, FCA announced a $5.3 billion investment in the United States over the next four years as a part of its agreement with the United Automobile Workers union. The plan was for “$3.4 billion invested in assembly plants, $1.5 billion at engine and transmission plants, $315 million at stamping plants and $34 million at Mopar parts distribution plants.”

So in reality, we can thank organized labor and the hard-working men and women of America’s factories for this investment – not the disruptive bullying and empty threats of a con man.

Trump has previously sent GM and Toyota stocks freefalling with his vague threats to impose a “big border tax!” on them if they don’t build factories in the United States, and is taking credit for deals made long before his election – like Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s $50 billion investment.

For Trump, who is a proponent of union-killing “right-to-work” laws and has spent his entire career refusing to pay his workers, to take credit for job creation that was the result of organized labor negotiations is a heinous insult and an outrageous hypocrisy. Organized labor and the union fuelled the postwar boom and made America great; it was greedy Republicans who gutted them, let wages stagnate, and funneled the wealth of the middle class to the top 1%. We cannot allow Trump to keep pretending he’s magically creating jobs and reinforce this ridiculous perception of him as a “worker’s man” when once again, it’s the American worker that has to do all the heavy lifting themselves and never get any credit for it.

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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