ANALYSIS: Trump couldn’t be more wrong about US jobs and foreign companies
The manufacturing revival he has promised was already under way, thanks to the multinationals he loves to hate, write Lesley Wroughton and Howard Schneider
Spartanburg/Charleston — Years before Donald Trump began promising to bring back good manufacturing jobs by getting tough with US trade partners, such jobs have already been on the rise, largely thanks to foreign companies now cast as villains in Trump’s narrative. Reuters analysis of federal jobs data shows that out of 656,000 new manufacturing jobs created between 2010 and 2014, two-thirds can be attributed to foreign direct investment. More recent jobs numbers are not yet available, but more than $700bn in foreign capital has poured in over the past two years bringing total foreign investment to $3.7-trillion at the end of 2016, a world record. Now foreign companies that have spent billions of dollars on US factories and local leaders who host them worry that global supply networks that back those investments will fray if Trump makes good on his pledge to roll back trade liberalisation. The US president has threatened to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) wit...
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