When Donald Trump announced his deal with Carrier to keep “1,100” (800) jobs in Indiana, many criticized him for exaggerating the number of jobs saved and breaking his campaign promise to get tough on companies that outsource. Now it seems even those 800 jobs are not safe, as Carrier will use much of its tax break money to automate them out of existence.

One major term of Trump’s deal to keep Carrier from moving a furnace plant from Indianapolis, Indiana to Monterrey, Mexico is that the company will invest $16 million in the Indianapolis facility. Unfortunately, much of that money will be invested in automating jobs that were formerly performed by human beings. Greg Hayes, CEO of United Technologies, the company that owns Carrier, admitted as much in an interview with CNBC.

“We’re gonna make up $16 million investment in that factory in Indianapolis to automate to drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive,” Hayes said. “Now is it as cheap as moving to Mexico with lower cost labor? No. But we will make that plant competitive just because we’ll make the capital investments there. But what that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.”

As Bernie Sanders explained in The Washington Post, the company is “hardly going broke.” It makes billions in profits, already gets substantial tax breaks, and compensates its executives handsomely. Hayes’ implication that the company must cut down on labor costs in order to survive is fatuous.

But while Hayes and company might be greedy assholes, they’re just doing what they’re incentivized to do by the system. It’s the business owner’s job to drive down labor costs as low as they can possibly go so as to maximize profits. Workers can push back by unionizing and bargaining for better wages and conditions, as well as lobbying the government for labor-friendly laws, but in a globalized economy, companies can circumvent that by moving operations to countries where unions and labor laws are weaker. If the U.S. government wants to stop that from happening, it needs to roll back some of the “free trade” deals it’s made and impose penalties that make outsourcing prohibitively expensive, not bribe companies to keep some of their jobs here until they figure out a new way to eliminate them. You know, the shit Trump said he would do.

But even if the president-elect imposed his promised 35% import tariff, he couldn’t stop the coming robot revolution, which could soon result in even greater unemployment and poverty than we see today. If Trump really wants to help suffering Americans, he should consider far-reaching solutions, like universal basic income.

[CNBC | Photo: Getty]