Trump Touts a Company’s Hiring Plan From 2015

EghtesadOnline: President Donald Trump touted Charter Communications Inc.’s plans to hire 20,000 workers over the next four years, an initiative the cable company has been discussing since at least June 2015.

News ID: ۷۷۴۸۳۵

25 March 2017

“This is great for their workers, for their customers, and certainly great for the United States,” Trump told reporters Friday after meeting with Charter Chief Executive Officer Tom Rutledge and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Charter said it will invest $25 billion on broadband infrastructure and technology in the U.S. over the next four years -- a figure that would be in line with its capital expenditures of $7.1 billion in 2016, according to Bloomberg.

Trump has a history of re-announcing hirings and investments that have long been in the works when he meets with corporate executives. Late last year, Trump touted an effort by Sprint Corp. to bring 5,000 jobs to the U.S., hiring that parent company SoftBank Group Corp. had already announced. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Motors Co. have also repackaged earlier plans for presidential purposes.

By aligning themselves with Trump’s pledges to protect American workers from competition abroad, companies can get the president’s ear to press their own agendas.

Charter is “also excited about the opportunity, in the right regulatory environment, the right tax environment, to make major infrastructure investments,” Rutledge told reporters. The plans are “predicated on the right regulatory consistency and efficiency we expect.”

Charter hadn’t previously disclosed the $25 billion investment figure. The company has long had a policy of hiring American workers for call centers and technician jobs, and Rutledge has been talking about “in-sourcing” offshore call centers run by Time Warner Cable Inc. since before Charter’s acquisition of that company last year.

Trump praised Charter Friday for opening a bilingual call center in McAllen, Texas, a facility that was also announced earlier.

With Trump in the White House, cable, phone and media company CEOs have sensed an opportunity to pursue bigger merger deals than they could have before under the Obama administration’s more restrictive antitrust policies.

Charter has already been linked in a potential big deal. Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam talked to Greg Maffei, CEO of top shareholder Liberty Media Corp., about buying the cable operator, Bloomberg reported in January. Comcast Corp.’s and Charter’s introduction of wireless services in the next year or so has sparked speculation that either one could go after a mobile-phone provider next -- Sprint or T-Mobile US Inc.