Plenty of blue-collar workers believe that, as president, Donald Trump would be ready to fight off U.S. trade adversaries and reinvigorate the country’s manufacturing industries through his commitment to the Rust Belt. What they likely don’t know is that Trump has been stiffing American steel workers on his own construction projects for years. A Newsweek investigation has found that in at least two of Trump’s last three construction projects, Trump opted to purchase his steel and aluminum from Chinese manufacturers rather than United States corporations based in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Asked to comment on Newsweek’s allegations, the billionaire real estate mogul told The New York Times that they’re “preposterous,” as well as that “everybody knows that Donald Trump is as patriotic a businessman as they come.” “I don’t know who those guys think they are, but they have no idea what they’re talking about and they should be ashamed of calling themselves reporters,” he said. “If they’d done their job right, they would have realized that while I’m profit-oriented, I still have a perfectly good reason for every single business decision I’ve ever made. But, they didn’t even bother to ask.”
“The projects they’re so infatuated with,” the Republican presidential candidate continued, “were special in several different ways. And one of them had to do with the fact that the design called for a special kind of bad quality, cheaper steel. Now, if I had been able to obtain this sort of steel from companies in America, believe me, I would have been knocking on their door personally. But, since American manufacturers are known for only making the mediocre and, unfortunately, pricey stuff, I had to go elsewhere. So, you see, it’s not my fault that we outsourced it to the Chinese. It’s the architect and designer who envisioned crappy Chinese steel in a Trump project. So go talk to him.”
The media magnate also added, “Don’t look at me, I always order from American manufacturers whenever I’m in need of overpriced, underperforming stuff. There’s no way I’m discriminating against our own economy, that’s no way to make this country great again. As a matter of fact, you know something? I’m going to find out who made the call to order from the Chinese right after this interview and I’m going to have them fired. The damage is already done, but it doesn’t mean whoever did it gets to walk away without any consequences. I don’t care if it was my own sons – they’re getting sacked in a couple of minutes, believe you me.”
“On the other hand, you have to understand – some of these low-cost projects have a very high rate of return, insurance-wise, I mean,” Trump also said. “It makes much more sense to build something cheaply and quickly, watch it crumble into dust a couple years later and walk away with a briefcase full of insurance cash than it is to invest billions in first-class materials and then hope they’ll pay themselves off over the course of the next 30-40 years. No one in their right mind would try to do that in today’s economy, so I really don’t see what the problem is here. I only did what every good businessman would have done. The difference is, the Democrats don’t want me to enact a law that allows that when I’m president, because Crooked Hillary’s pockets are filled with American steel manufacturers’ cash. That is, in addition to pretty much everyone else’s. But don’t worry, I’m onto them.”
