The first news conference given by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump since his election victory in November — coming just nine days before he is to take office next week — appears to have done little to allay mounting uncertainties over the incoming administration. Roughly two months after his upset win in the presidential race, there seems no indication that Trump and his team have refined their campaign rhetoric into coherent policy principles that will guide his administration, leaving broad concerns about the unpredictability of U.S. intentions on his watch unaddressed.
He claimed that he will be the "greatest jobs creator that God ever created" as he cited his efforts to bring businesses back to the United States. But the only specific tool he mentioned to achieve that was the repeated threat of imposing heavy border taxes on firms that shift operations overseas. He heaped praise on automakers that either canceled a plan to build a new plant in Mexico or disclosed a plan to boost capacity in the U.S. — in response to his tweets bullying companies seeking to move their production out of the country.
"You're going to pay a very large border tax if you want to move to another country and fire all of our great American workers that got you there in the first place," he said. He doesn't seem to care much about facts when he goes after individual companies to try to pressure them into changing their business plans to please him — Toyota Motor Corp., which joined the ranks of firms targeted by the president-elect's tweets last week, has no plans to cut or relocate its operations in the U.S. but is building a new car plant in Mexico.