By Tim Reid and Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump said on Tuesday said he would seek to “take” manufacturing jobs from foreign countries, including U.S. allies, if he wins the Nov. 5 election, by offering incentives to encourage companies to relocate to the United States.
Trump promised a “manufacturing renaissance” as the centerpiece of his economic plan and said he would offer foreign companies low taxes and little regulation to entice them.
“We will take other countries’ jobs,” Trump said during a speech to supporters in Savannah, Georgia, which has one of the largest ports in the U.S. and is a car-manufacturing hub. “We’re going to take their factories.”
The Republican presidential candidate said a vote for him would result in a “mass exodus” of manufacturing from U.S. allies South Korea and Germany as well as economic rival China.
Trump’s speech, his second major address on the economy this month, comes as he and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, vie to convince voters in battleground states like Georgia that they will be the best stewards of the U.S. economy.
The high cost of living and jobs are the top issues for Americans according to opinion polls.
Harris has blunted Trump’s advantage on economic issues, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday. Asked which candidate had the better approach on the “economy, unemployment and jobs,” some 43% of voters picked Trump and 41% selected Harris. Trump held an 11-point lead over Harris on the economy in late July.
Harris is set to make a major economic speech in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Some of Harris’ proposals will also be broadly aimed at helping Americans build and maintain wealth, Reuters reported.
‘SUBSTANTIAL TARIFF’
Trump said during his speech that his planned incentives would be offered only to foreign companies that relocated manufacturing to the U.S. and hired American workers.
“I want German car companies to become American car companies. I want them to build their plants here,” Trump said.
Companies that did not make their goods in the U.S., however, would face “a very substantial tariff” when sending their products into the U.S., he said.
On Monday, Trump said he would slap a 200% tariff on John Deere’s imports into the U.S. if the agricultural equipment company moved production to Mexico as planned.
Preserving and creating American manufacturing jobs by imposing expansive tariffs on friends and foes alike has become a central theme of Trump’s economic message.
While Trump and his allies say trade barriers are necessary to protect U.S. industry, many economists say Trump’s proposals would boost inflation.
Trump said he would reward U.S.-based manufacturers with tax breaks for research and development costs and the ability to write off the costs of heavy machinery in the first year.
He repeated his promise to slash the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products in the U.S.
Trump pledged to appoint a global manufacturing ambassador to convince foreign companies to move to the U.S. He also said he would create special low tax, low regulatory zones on federal lands for American-based manufacturers.
It is unclear what federal lands would be offered to foreign companies under Trump’s plan, or how such an arrangement would work. If land remains in federal hands while foreign companies operate on it, those companies could in theory be exempt from property tax.
Trump has been announcing new economic policies in recent months that his team believes are attractive to working and middle-class voters, including ending the federal taxation of tips and overtime.
Many economists warn that ending such taxes will lower government revenues and explode the federal deficit.
(Reporting by Tim Reid and Gram Slattery, editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)