This is from the Washington Post:
Trump’s strategy secured an early victory this week when the president-elect persuaded air-conditioning manufacturer Carrier not to move up to 1,000 jobs from Indiana to Mexico. The negotiation was an unusual move for a modern president, but [Treasury secretary nominee Steven] Mnuchin suggested such direct intervention would be an important tool under the new administration.
“It starts with an attitude of this administration,” Mnuchin said Wednesday on CNBC. “This president, this vice president-elect is going to have open communications with business leaders.”
Carrier's decision to keep some jobs in Indiana seems to have been in response to a combination of subsidies from the state of Indiana and jawboning from President-elect Trump, although many details are still lacking.
In the short run, this seems like an expensive way to save a few jobs, and taxpayer subsidies to the big corporations who have leverage over them is generally criticized from both sides of the political spectrum (although it is a common practice).
In the long run, it is hard to see how any jobs are saved. Other governments will notice what the U.S. government is doing, and are likely to adopt similar strategies (or to be more precise, since most governments already do this to some extent, intensify their efforts). So, even if a few Carrier jobs are saved in this instance, the flow of job-creating foreign investment into the U.S. may slow down, as other governments subsidize and jawbone their own companies.
So those are some policy issues. Now how about a technical, WTO legal issue. Here's my question: Is the President-elect of the U.S. making a phone call (if that's the way it happened) to a company to convince them to stay in the U.S. a "measure" for the purposes of the DSU? Is it an action that is attributable to the U.S. government?
