POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

Writing for Yahoo News, Jon Ward describes efforts to track the outsourcing of products sold by Donald Trump’s various companies:

“Trump, like most celebrities who monetize their fame, does not always manage the day-to-day operations of the companies that make goods with his name on them, instead making licensing deals and receiving payments simply for the use of his name as a brand. It’s the same approach he has taken to real estate: There are 17 properties in Manhattan with the Trump name on them, but Trump owns only five of the buildings.

“Nonetheless, public data collected by a private company, ImportGenius, which gathers export and import information, shows Trump products outsourcing jobs back to 2006. And the trend has intensified over the past few years. Since 2011, around 1,200 shipments of goods with the Trump name on them have come to the U.S. from other countries. Our Principles PAC, a super-PAC opposing Trump, compiled the data from ImportGenius into an Excel spreadsheet (viewable here) with 1,356 shipments going back to 2006.

“And this is a conservative estimate, since the ImportGenius data compiled by Our Principles only listed items that included Trump’s name on the ‘bill of lading,’ a certificate issued by carriers to ensure that exporters receive payment and importers get the goods they’ve paid for. Sometimes, product marks or labels are not included in shipping records.”

Ward’s complete article is available at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-outsourcing-includes-home-goods-daughters-190543492.html.

The spreadsheet that Ward describes and to which he links includes so many columns that it will not reduce to a PDF of any size. So I have reduced it to just three columns: that describing the products and those indicating the cities and nations from which the products were shipped. Simply skimming the resulting pages should clarify to all Americans employed in manufacturing or concerned about the future of American manufacturing the degree to which Trump has profited—and continues to profit—by having the products that bear his ubiquitous name made just about anywhere other than in the United States.