Carrier Corp. deal touted by Trump is unusual for Indiana

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS

The deal brokered by President Donald Trump to stem job losses at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis is unusual for the state of Indiana as it offers $7 million of incentives to a company still planning to cut about a third of its some 1,600 jobs.

A state economic development board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on endorsing the package nearly four months after Trump celebrated his role in the negotiations with a visit to the plant, which makes furnaces.

Most of the scant details that Indiana officials have released came on a one-page handout distributed by then-Gov. Mike Pence’s staff when he and Trump traveled to the Carrier factory on Dec. 1. Trump, who during the presidential campaign had often criticized Carrier’s plans to shutter the factory and shift production to Mexico, declared that the company’s reversal would be the first of many such decisions with him as president.

Many states offer tax breaks and training grants for companies to retain jobs, but that hasn’t been the case in Indiana over the last 12 years, when Republicans have held the governor’s office. During that time, the state has typically demanded companies receiving such economic development deals promise to create new jobs.

Carrier announced last February that it would close the Indianapolis factory and cut about 1,400 production jobs in a move expected to save $65 million annually. The deal with the state saves about 800 of those jobs, but about 550 of them are still being eliminated. Carrier also promises to keep 250 headquarters and engineering staff positions in Indianapolis that the company had said all along would stay in the state.

Indiana Secretary of Commerce Jim Schellinger said he wishes jobs weren’t being eliminated at the factory, but is happy it is staying open.

“This was not a threat; they’d left,” he said. “They were in the process of putting the finishing touches on a $52 million plant in Monterrey, Mexico.”

The $7 million over a decade that Carrier will receive pales in comparison with the $57 billion in sales reported by parent company United Technologies for last year. Trump had leverage because United Technologies also owns Pratt & Whitney, which has billions in contracts to produce fighter jet engines for the U.S. military.