Amazon one of many US companies Trump has attacked
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump pledged that he had the business background and acumen to boost the U.S. economy.
His push for economic growth, however, hasn’t stopped him from slamming some of the country’s biggest and best-known companies.
He went on the attack against Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S., earlier this week. But Amazon is not alone.
Here’s a list of other companies Trump has disparaged as president.
The industrial manufacturing company had announced plans to close an Indianapolis plant and move the jobs to Mexico in October 2016, weeks before Trump was elected. The then-president-elect took issue with it last December.
“Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!” he wrote in a Dec. 2, 2016, tweet.
The plant’s closure cut 300 jobs, but the company still employed more than 7,000 workers in the U.S.
Trump brought attention to the company again last May with another tweet, this time appearing to suggest that its products and others made outside of the U.S. should be subject to import taxes.
“Rexnord of Indiana made a deal during the Obama Administration to move to Mexico. Fired their employees. Tax product big that’s sold in U.S.” he wrote on May 7, 2017.
Manufacturing meltdown
Trump’s handling of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, prompted business leaders on the American Manufacturing Council to resign.
These leaders blamed the president’s handling of the Charlottesville violence in public statements.
Trump responded by attacking the business leaders, including the CEOs of 3M, Intel and Under Armour, among others.
“For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Aug. 15, 2017.
The next day, Trump announced that he was ending the council “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople.”
Trump took specific aim at Ken Frazier, the chairman and CEO of pharmaceutical company Merck and the only African-American member on the council.
Frazier announced on Aug. 14, 2017, that he was stepping down “as a matter of personal conscience” and said that “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry, and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”
Trump responded with two accusatory tweets blasting Merck, which has 69,000 employees.
“Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council,he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
The following day, during the same news conference where he said there were “fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville violence, Trump attacked Merck again.
“If you look at Merck as an example … Take a look at where their product is made. It’s made outside of our country. We want products made in the country,” Trump said when asked about the CEOs who were leaving the council.
“Now I have to tell you, some of the folks that will leave, they’re leaving out of embarrassment because they make their products outside. And I’ve been lecturing them, including the gentleman that you’re referring to, about you have to bring it back to this country,” Trump said.
