WASHINGTON: Indiana will give United Technologies $7 million in tax breaks to keep 1,000 jobs at its Carrier plant there but the company actually agreed to the deal because “we had an election” and the corporate giant was wary of losing federal contracts, according to a state official.
John Mutz, a Republican and ex-lieutenant governor who sits on Indiana’s Economic Development Corp., said Carrier had turned down similar offers from the state before Election Day.
“This deal is no different than other deals that we put together at the IEDC to retain jobs, but the fact is that the difference is that United Technologies depends on the federal government for lots of business,” Mutz told Politico.
“The major factor that’s changed is we had an election,” he said, adding that Team Trump was well aware of UT’s lucrative federal contracts.
Connecticut-based United Technologies — which reported revenue of $56 billion in 2015 — has nearly $7 billion in federal contracts. That figure dwarfs the $65 million it hoped to save by moving Carrier jobs to Mexico.
Carrier will keep about 800 jobs at its furnace-manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, which it had planned to move south of the border. It will also spend about $16 million to upgrade its operations.
The United Technologies deal, which provides the tax breaks over a decade, also covers another 300 Carrier jobs that were not slated to go to Mexico.
The company still plans to move 600 jobs from the Carrier plant to Mexico and will close a second plant in Huntington, Ind., that makes electronic controls, shifting 700 more jobs out of the United States.
Trump and his vice president-elect, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, toured the Indianapolis plant Thursday.
