In response to Donald Trump selecting David Perdue as the Ambassador to China, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Donald Trump is rewarding yet another ultra-MAGA loyalist who built his fortune by selling out the American people. David Perdue can’t be trusted to stand up for American workers — just to push Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda that will ship jobs overseas and hurt middle-class families.”

NEW: Donald Trump tapped offshoring multimillionaire and former Senator David Perdue as Ambassador to China. 

Associated Press: “Trump names former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia to be ambassador to China”

“President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he is choosing former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia to be ambassador to China.

“Trump said in a social media post that Perdue, a former CEO, ‘brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China.’ Perdue pushed Trump’s debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed bid for Georgia governor.”

Perdue made a fortune by selling out American jobs to China.

Washington Post: “Sen. David Perdue became wealthy outsourcing work to Asia. Now the former CEO stands with Trump, who wants to ‘end our reliance on China.’”

“When Republican David Perdue ran for the Senate […], he spoke proudly of his years as a corporate executive in Asia. He made no apologies for having said that he ‘spent most of my career’ relying on the outsourcing of jobs. …

“In fact, Perdue was a top executive at some of the country’s best-known consumer brands, spending years in Hong Kong and Singapore, which he used as bases to travel across Asia to take advantage of the region’s lower-cost workforces. He was senior vice president of Asia operations for Sara Lee, a conglomerate that owned clothing lines and wanted to expand production in China, and global vice president and later president of Reebok, which made most of its footwear overseas, including in China.

“Such efforts to lower costs by moving jobs out of the United States to Asia have been common for the past several decades, and Perdue in his first campaign strongly defended the practice. …

“Keith Alm, who worked with Perdue in the Hong Kong office, said in an interview that Perdue was ‘a very shrewd business guy’ who worked with companies across China that had ties to the communist government.

“‘David was a very key figure in terms of establishing relationships with the Chinese government as well as the manufacturers of different products,’ said Alm, who was an executive senior vice president at Sara Lee at the time. ‘They’re all inextricably linked. Obviously, when you work in China, you work with the Chinese government. So he had exposure and management responsibilities for developing that relationship.’”

New York Times: “Before Embracing America-First Agenda, David Perdue Was an Outsourcing Expert”

“The man who has lately voiced support for some of President Trump’s signature tariffs built his career as an unapologetic, free-trading practitioner of the outsourcing arts. As a top executive at companies including Reebok, Sara Lee and Dollar General, he was often deeply involved in the shift of manufacturing, and jobs, to low-wage factories in China and other Asian countries.”

REMINDER: Trump’s disastrous record includes offshored jobs, shuttered factories, and manufacturing job losses across the country.

Bloomberg: “The Offshoring of U.S. Jobs Increased on Trump’s Watch”

Washington Post: “Trump promised ‘America First’ would keep jobs here. But the tax plan might push them overseas.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics: “When Trump left office, there were over 170,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when he started.”

Federal Economic Data: “Michiganders lost 31,000 manufacturing jobs over the course of Trump’s presidency.”

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s trade war against China didn’t achieve the central objective of reversing a U.S. decline in manufacturing, economic data show, despite tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to discourage imports.”

CNN: “Trump told GM workers he could save their plant, but it’s gone for good”

“Manufacturing activity in September [of 2019] fell to its lowest point in a decade. The Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which Trump flipped, have all lost manufacturing jobs since June. Many of those jobs have moved overseas.”

Detroit Free Press: “Trump, tweets couldn’t save U.S. auto jobs in 2017”

New York Times: “After Years of Growth, Automakers Are Cutting U.S. Jobs”