Washington:
US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday warned US companies of "consequences" if they relocate abroad and promised to slash tax from 35 per cent to 15 per cent to make America attractive for businesses.
"Companies are not going to leave the US any more without consequences. Not going to happen. It's not going to happen, I'll tell you right now," Trump said as he visited a plant of leading air conditioning manufacturer Carrier in Indiana where he announced that he has struck a deal with the company to change their plan to relocate to Mexico and saved more than 1,100 jobs in the process.
Trump said he called the top leadership of Carrier to make the deal happen."We're losing so much. So one of the things we're doing to keep them is we're going to lowering our business tax from 35 per cent, hopefully down to 15 per cent, which would take us from the highest-taxed national virtually in the world -- this is terrible for business -- to one of the lower taxed.
Not the lowest yet, but one of the lower taxed," he said. During the presidential campaign, the Republican billionaire had threatened to slap tariffs on firms quit Ameica for places like Mexico, China and India where labour costs are cheaper. It became a repeated refrain of his victorious campaign.
"I just want to let all of the other companies know that we're going to do great things for business. There's no reason for them to leave anymore because your taxes are going to be at the very, very low end, and your unnecessary regulations are going to be gone," he said assuring companies that the US would be a business friendly destination.Trump also blamed people from Middle East 'pouring in the US.
"People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East. We have no idea who they are, where they come from, what they're thinking and we?re going to stop that dead, cold flat," he said.Trump insisted that his administration will build the wall across the Mexico border."We're going to build the wall. People are saying: Do youthink Trump's going to build the wall? Trust me, we're goingto build a wall. And by the way, people are going to comethrough that wall. We're going to have doors in that wall, butthey're going to come through legally," he said.
"People are going to come through on worker permits towork the fields. We're going to have a lot of people are goingto come through. But it's going to be done through a legalprocess," he asserted. Addressing the gathering, the vice president-elect MikePence said Trump personally called the top leadership ofUnited Technologies, which owns Carrier.
"President-elect Donald Trump did just what he said hewould do. He picked up the phone. I was actually in the room.He picked up the phone. He talked from one American toanother. He talked about our plans, our plans to make Americamore competitive, to reduce taxes, to roll back regulations,to put American jobs and American workers first again. He madethe case for America," he said.
