AUTO INDUSTRY/JOBS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “It has all the elements of a classic Trump tale: intervention with an otherwise heartless company, a saved factory in the heartland, and assurances that old-school manufacturing jobs would be preserved. On Wednesday [5-8-19], the factory in question was the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Mr. Trump announced that it was being sold to a little-known maker of electric vehicles, Workhorse Group, and that G.M. was making a new investment in the state…But for all the seemingly good news in Ohio, which has been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs, the president’s record in delivering on such deals suggests that caution is warranted. He helped persuade Carrier to keep a factory in Indianapolis open in 2016, but the company still cut roughly half of the jobs at stake there. In 2017, he said Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics supplier, would invest $10 billion to build a manufacturing complex in Wisconsin. The company was supposed to create 13,000 jobs — positions that have proved illusory. Mr. Trump’s 2018 assertion that ‘Chrysler is leaving Mexico and moving back to Michigan’ was a stretch by any measure.”
–Nelson D. Schwartz and Neal E. Boudette, “‘We Have a Lot of Questions’: Doubts Loom Over G.M. Plan for Lordstown Pla,” The New York Times online, May 8, 2019