Washington, Nov 30 (EFE).- The White House on Wednesday said that the agreement announced by President-elect Donald Trump to prevent the transfer of hundreds of jobs to Mexico was “good news” but added that much remains to be done before the mogul can equal the number of pacts of that kind achieved by President Barack Obama.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest commented during his daily press conference on the decision by U.S. air conditioner company Carrier to keep in this country some of the 2,000 jobs it had intended to move to Mexico.
“The early indications are that this is good news and obviously we would welcome that good news,” said Earnest.
The White House gave Trump credit for Carrier’s decision to keep about 1,000 jobs it had planned to transfer to Mexico in this country, and both he and Vice President-elect Mike Pence are scheduled on Thursday to visit the Indiana firm’s plant to make the formal announcement.
Earnest, however, said that if Trump “is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs that were created in the US while President Obama has been in office,” adding that 805,000 manufacturing jobs have been created in this country during Obama’s two terms.
“President Obama set a high standard and President-elect Trump can meet that standard if this Carrier deal is completed in the way that he expects that it will be and if he does that 804 more times,” Earnest said.
Earnest also curtly responded to Trump’s announcement that he will hold a Dec. 15 press conference to announce how he will divest himself “in total” of his private business activities, which he said he intends to leave in the hands of his family.
Observers will have to come to their own conclusions about that based on the details of Trump’s announcement, said Earnest, noting that there is an “ethics office” within the government that is tasked with preventing such conflicts of interest and that the US public will rely on reporters to solicit responses from the president-elect to be sure any doubts are laid to rest.
The press secretary added that Obama has done more than required to avoid any apparent conflict of interest while he has been president, adding that after he won the 2008 election he liquidated his stocks and bought Treasury Bonds despite the fact that at the time interest rates were at historic lows.