In the wake of Carrier announcing they were moving jobs from Indiana to Mexico, President Obama told one of the company's employees during a June town hall meeting there was nothing that could be done about the trend of jobs leaving America.
“What can we look forward to in the future as far as jobs, employment, whatever? Because all of our jobs have left or [are] in the process of leaving, sir,” Eric Cottonham asked the president.
Part of Obama’s response included telling Cottonham that some jobs that were leaving wouldn’t be returning.
“What we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are coming in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back,” he said.
He then shifted to talking about Donald Trump, who months earlier on the campaign trail said that if he were elected and Carrier did move the jobs to Mexico, he’d look to impose taxes on all products that were sold in the U.S.
“ … when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do?”
“There’s — there’s no answer to it,” Obama said.
“He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer,” he continued.
During a PBS-hosted Town Hall in June of this year, Obama told a Carrier employee that it would require a "magic... https://t.co/8olPGNwDFa
— Deplorable Warrior (@tneliton) December 1, 2016