WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s opening work day offered a look at his tricky balancing act between American businesses and the working-class voters who propelled his march to the White House.
The name of the game, Trump tweeted before dawn: “Jobs.” He then met with American business executives to both charm and threaten them into doing business in the US The real estate titan later served notice he was pulling the US out of participating in a proposed Pacific trade pact and promised to renegotiate a 23-year-old agreement with Canada and Mexico — both of which, Trump has said, are bad for jobs. Trump also bore down on the one sector of the American economy he says has too many jobs: The federal government, whose hiring and wages he froze with the stroke of an executive order pen.
Before the day was out, Trump had gathered union leaders — from those representing sheet metal workers to carpenters — to listen to their concerns and hear their applause over his assault on what he called “ridiculous” trade deals. It’s all part of an audacious plan to grow the economy by 4 percent a year while shrinking the trade gap and creating 25 million jobs over the next decade — despite obstacles that have vexed presidents of both parties for decades.
“We’re going to put a lot of people back to work; we’re going to use common sense,” Trump insisted Monday. At one point, he called reporters back into his meeting with labor leaders to hear Doug McCarron of the United Brotherhood of Carpenter praise Trump’s inaugural address.
The speech “hit home for the people who have been hurting,” said McCarron, who had endorsed Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.
Trump’s approach tracks with exit polls that showed two-thirds of white voters without a college degree chose him over Clinton. These voters comprised nearly half of all of Trump’s voters, according to the survey conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.
