By Mary Papenfuss
The HuffPost (7/7/18)
Just over a year after Donald Trump signed his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, his Mar-a-Lago golf resort has filed for permission to hire 61 foreign workers.
Trump’s Palm Beach business filed requests with the U.S. Labor Department for additional visas for foreign servers and cooks, according to records submitted Thursday and Friday. The employees would work October through the following May. Servers would earn $12.68 an hour and cooks would be paid $13.31 an hour.
Since late 2015, Mar-a-Lago has filed 10 separate requests for multiple temporary work visas for foreign employees.
The New York Times has reported that since 2010, only 17 of 300 American applicants were hired to work at the resort that Trump now calls the “Winter White House” or the “Southern White House.” Since 2010 Mar-a-Lago alone has obtained a total of 500 H-2B visas for seasonal foreign workers, according to The New Yorker.
The Trump Organization hired at least 1,260 foreign workers from 2001 to 2016, according to a CNN analysis. Trump appears to prefer foreign workers at his resorts who are female, young, attractive, and with Romanian or South African accents that convey an “exotic appeal,” former workers told the network. ….
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
- MSNBC Panel Calls It A Joke That Trump’s Mar-a-lago Makes Any Real Effort To Hire American Workers — President Donald Trump might tell his supporters that he is all about supporting America and the American worker, but the facts point to a different point. MSNBC host Kassie Hunt welcomed Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who reported Friday that Mar-a-Lago is asking for a pass by the Labor Department to hire 61 workers. The laws outline that there must be a good-faith effort put into working to find American employees prior to asking for a waiver. Fahrenthold explained that those requirements are considerably less than the average person would thing. Mar-a-Lago, for example, has shown that it has tried to recruit American workers with an ad in the Palm Beach Post “where if they’re interested to apply by fax.” “Oh!” exclaimed Hunt. “I’m sure many people have a fax this day in age.” … Read the Rest and 2+-Minute Video
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Ivanka Trump’s Chinese-Made Products Conveniently Spared From Dad’s Tariffs
Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods won’t touch Ivanka Trump’s foreign-made products for her fashion line.
While Trump rails at Harley-Davidson motorcycles for moving some production to Europe to dodge EU tariffs, the first daughter and senior White House adviser has never manufactured a single product for her Ivanka Trump brand on American soil.
Trump enacted tariffs Friday morning on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, affecting hundreds of products from boats to medical devices and auto parts. Products spared include those manufactured by his daughter.
That means Chengdu Kameido Shoes in Sichuan province can continue to supply shoes for the Ivanka Trump brand as it has in the past. It’s currently bidding for a new contract to manufacture 140,000 pairs of shoes for Trump’s company, a spokesman told The South China Morning Post. …