President Trump to American Companies: Join Me in Putting American Workers First

Jason D. Meister
August 1, 2019 Updated: August 2, 2019

Commentary

President Trump’s economic policies encourage American companies to put America first.

For too long, multinational corporations have taken advantage of American workers, consumers, and citizens. With the aid of a complicit Washington elite, American companies have sent vital jobs overseas, preferring cheap foreign labor to the industrious toil of their fellow citizens. They lined their pockets with the savings, enriching their shareholders while devastating American communities.

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President Trump’s America First agenda has put a stop to this ruthless exploitation of American citizens, bringing back American jobs and holding companies accountable to the interests of American citizens, not just corporate shareholders.

President Trump has made it easier for companies to invest in America by slashing our formerly-burdensome corporate tax rate to make it easier for businesses to hire and invest, eliminating job-killing regulations that had strangled our economy, and overturning conventional wisdom on international trade that had devastated American communities for decades.

The administration’s approval of the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint is further confirmation of this trend. As an assurance that the merger will benefit consumers, both companies have made commitments to the FCC to invest in rural America and 5G networks.

In doing so, they will address two of the greatest challenges facing America’s digital infrastructure today: the “digital divide” between rural and metropolitan areas that deprives millions of rural Americans of access to the internet, and the specter of China’s 5G dominance.

The competition to develop 5G technology is the Space Race of our day, promising significant advantages to the country that implements the transformative technology first. By greenlighting the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, the Trump administration demonstrated a far-sighted commitment to providing economic opportunities to the American people.

The same principle was behind the President’s refusal to grant Apple a waiver exempting Mac Pro parts produced in China from the strategic counter-tariffs he has imposed in retaliation for China’s rampant trade cheating. Apple, which used to make Mac Pro parts in the United States, took production offshore in June to cut costs, right in the midst of the Trump administration’s ongoing trade negotiations with China.

As he works to secure a historic trade agreement with China, President Trump’s counter-tariffs are a key element to his strategy, raising costs for Chinese exporters and incentivizing multinational corporations to relocate their production from China to one of the many other countries with similarly low labor costs. Apple, however, jumped into bed with the Chinese Communist Party, and is now threatening to raise prices if President Trump doesn’t exempt it from the tariffs that are intended, in part, to prevent that very sort of behavior.

Apple will surely mount a media campaign to pressure Trump to change his mind, but the company doesn’t deserve our sympathy. Apple, which is currently sitting on $225 billion in cash, has gotten rich by supporting a Chinese regime that has expressed nothing but hostility toward the American people.

Taking on the radical, unchecked Chinese regime and its corporate boosters is essential to creating a secure future for American workers, and President Trump was absolutely right to deny Apple special treatment that would undermine the hard-won progress we’ve made toward ending China’s trade abuses.

This President will always put America first in his economic and foreign policy, which he knows is the key to Keeping America Great. He’s also making it clear that he expects the same from American companies who have the power to put American jobs and workers first.

Jason D. Meister is an Advisory Board Member of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and Managing Director of Ackman-Ziff.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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