Bernie Sanders Wants Trump To Threaten United Technologies (UTX) Against Moving Jobs To Mexico

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, and President-elect Donald Trump may make for unlikely political allies, but they do have something in common - a mission to keep jobs from leaving America.

Trump is still about eight weeks away from taking office but Sanders is already turning up the heat on the president-elect to keep one of his biggest campaign promises of saving American jobs. The senator fired off a stream of tweets over the weekend, and unveiled a proposed Outsourcing Prevention Act.

To drive his point home, the former presidential candidate from the Democratic Party picked on United Technologies Corp., maker of Carrier air conditioners. Both Sanders and Trump, during their campaigns, had promised to stop Carrier from moving 2,100 jobs and a production plant from Indiana to Mexico.

Not all details of the proposed act have been revealed yet but Sanders said it would work by “preventing companies that outsource jobs from receiving federal contracts, tax breaks, grants or loans.” He also laid into the Carrier maker.

“Last year, United Technologies received over $6 billion in federal contracts, making it the seventh largest recipient of federal contract funds. Over the past 15 years, this Fortune 500 company has used loopholes in the tax code to shelter more than two-thirds of its $38 billion in profits from federal taxation. It has also received over $50 million in corporate welfare from the Export-Import Bank.”

In another tweet, he went further, asking Trump to threaten the company against moving its plant to Mexico.

On Thursday, Trump had said he was working with the company to convince it to keep its plant in the U.S.

Carrier confirmed it “had discussions with the incoming administration.”

Shares of Farmington, Conn.-based United Technologies closed higher by 0.62 percent Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.