President-elect Donald Trump will roll into Fayetteville today as part of his “thank you” tour of key state’s that won him the White House. He certainly should be grateful for the mostly white and working-class voters who put him over the top in a state that some polls showed Hillary Clinton winning.
Saying “thank you” is always right, but Trump’s moves since the election seem to be saying “fooled you.” His top appointments and others under consideration are a mix of billionaires, hard-right Republicans and generals. It’s not a group that appears concerned with the needs of working people.
Trump did save some 800 jobs that Carrier was planning to send to Mexico, but it came at the cost of $7 million in tax breaks granted by the Carrier plants home state, Indiana, and perhaps a more favorable treatment of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, when it comes to adding to its $5.6 billion in defense contracts.
Meanwhile, Trump has been vague about a court ruling striking down President Obama overtime rules that would have raised the threshold for overtime pay from $23,660 to $47,476. The change would benefit 4.2 million workers, including an estimated 156,000 in North Carolina. Trump says he would like to delay the Obama rules and exempt small business from the highest threshold.
Trump supports right-to work laws that undermine unions and he’s flip-flopped on supporting a higher federal minimum wage. Trump is promising to slap higher tariffs on imports and punish companies that send jobs overseas, but those moves could increase the cost of consumer goods and hurt American companies that export.
It’s still unclear whether the president election by workers will prove an anti-worker president, but the early signs are that Trump is listening to the wealthy and big corporations even as he says “thank you” to working people.