A lot of press focused on several hundred jobs 'saved' in Indiana through Trump and Pence efforts. Apparently, 700-900 jobs are not going to be moved to Mexico because of state tax incentives. The state of Indiana is going to 'invest' $23M to keep those jobs. Carrier says they would have saved $65M to move all 2,100 to Mexico.
Carrier thus will save $43M roughly and lose $22M but gain $7M in operational costs (tax breaks, etc) and $16M in facility upgrades. Initially it's a wash for Carrier. It had to be in order for Carrier to continually incur larger expenses to maintain any operations in Indiana. Perhaps there was a hint of increased costs with tariffs on products produced in Mexico if NAFTA goes away or a Trump administration imposes other penalties. However, it's still a "2/3" risk of increasing penalties.
As much as I have a noble mission for my business too (like retaining jobs in the US)--hiring people needing a 2nd chance and a 1st chance as refugees--I can't hire more people if I don't have the demand and don't have a positive cash flow. Taxes aren't the issue that keep me from hiring. It's operational and overhead costs. Mr. Trump, if I threaten to layoff my workers, will you cover my losses?
Update June 23, 2017: the Carrier plant is losing 600 of its remaining 1400 production jobs soon because of the facility upgrades (automation). It seems the company will keep to its promise of nearly 1,100 jobs remaining in the Indianapolis plant: over 300 engineering and administrative jobs that were never going to be lost anyway and the remainder are production--but down by almost half since the deal was made.
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