The six firms are part of the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, a White House advisory council created to help Trump deliver on his promise to increase factory employment. Trump is expected to meet with several manufacturing executives on Thursday, but it is not clear whether they are part of the group.
About 2,400 U.S. workers at these six companies stand to lose their jobs within the next two years as a result of the offshoring, according to the Labor Department’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, which provides retraining benefits to workers displaced by global trade. Reuters obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The six companies confirmed the planned job cuts to Reuters. It is not clear whether the other 19 companies on the council are currently offshoring work, as the TAA program does not cover all workers who lose their jobs due to global trade.
The lost jobs amount to a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers employed by the council’s 25 corporate members. General Electric, for example, employs 125,000 U.S. workers, financial filings show.
On the campaign trail and in the White House, Trump has painted globalization as a zero-sum game that has enriched low-wage countries while leaving the United States littered with abandoned factories and underemployed workers, and he has threatened to tax companies that offshore U.S. jobs.
