A study released this week concludes that the so-called President, despite all his bluster, has done little to stop American corporations from offshoring US jobs.

The study, conducted by Good Jobs Nation and Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, combines data from usaspending.gov, which lists the firms that obtain federal contracts and the dollar value of those contracts, with “shift in production” petitions certified by the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) since 1994.

The report shows that most of the firms that are receiving federal contracts are still engaged in offshoring American jobs, and beyond an occasional tweet storm, or highly public grandstanding like with Carrier, Trump has done little to address this.

Trump has Twitter-threatened firms considering offshoring and lobbied others to invest domestically instead of abroad. But so far his jawboning has not fundamentally changed corporate behavior, as United Technology’s decision to go ahead with the offshoring of hundreds of jobs to Mexico shows.”

The so-called President has broad authority to affect policies that influence this issue including executive action and support for legislation from the Republican-majority Congress. The most obvious and immediate action would be an Executive Order to that ties federal contracts to the preservation of US jobs. But so far, little has been done. The President did issue a directive on using American steel in federally-funded pipeline projects, but then promptly waived that requirement for the mother-of-all-pipelines, Keystone XL.

That project will use Russian steel.

Because, of course.

With the GOP in Congress in a deep coma, it has apparently been left to the minority Democrats to propose legislation and they have put forward measures that take a more systematic approach to combatting corporate offshoring, including Senator Sanders’ “Outsourcing Prevention Act” and Senators Donnelly, Brown, and Gillibrand’s “End Outsourcing Act.”

The White House has been silent on these proposals.

Ironically, the report was released at the same time that the Washington Post reported that inspectors from the Fair Labor Association found that workers in the Chinese factory that produce merchandise for the Trump Organization’s “Ivanka” line are forced to work very long hours for substandard wages. The report found that despite their “buy American, hire American” rhetoric, the Trump family was deeply reliant on cheap foreign manufacturing:

Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday.”

One hundred days into his Presidency, Donald Trump has proven himself a master at bellicose posturing, aggressive threats, unsubstantiated accusations and promotion of his own personal financial interests. It remains to be seen whether he will propose or enact meaningful action on one of the core promises of his campaign – bringing US jobs home – and whether his supporters will see through the so-far empty rhetoric to demand action.

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