It very much depends upon whether you (generic you) are a “purist” (not meaning to label anyone, just to provide an illustration) like Mark Levin, or more practical.
In the pure sense, gov’t should not be involved with “picking winners and losers” and interfering with private business. Also, “the gov’t” in a sense is saying “Hey that factory you built in Mexico? Rent it out, burn it down, I don’t care what you do with it”. It is in effect a private condemnation in one sense.
And of course, it sets a kind of precedent, in that the habit of sucking up to government is immutable in all cultures, ours especially. In other words, I am saying, it depends how much of an absolutist you are with your terms. Levin is/was being rather critical of the deal just to be critical of something.
And...it also sets a certain precedent of threatening cos thinking about offshoring with penalties and tariffs.
$7 MM isn’t spit in the overall scheme of things. I am sure the 0bama regime has spent money like that on crony stuff like Solyndra $550 MM (and 20 or so other solar cos) and the 0bamacare website @ $670 MM and duck genital studies, not to mention getting his grandmother a pension @ $161K a year. Governments have certainly blown off money like this to get a film produced in the locale with the promise of “many more” and found themselves snaked. If 1K jobs can be saved for $7MM, I would frankly approve of that type of direct-result spending versus the sort of flaming goofball stuff spent on illegal alien resettlement, for example. I don’t find that a hard decision.
And I take your point that relieving taxes is not a bribe; but it certainly will engender others to ask and lobby for same.
Well let be truful there is no true purity
If government exist in any way it does impinge and effect who wins and who loses
governments are constituted to prevent the anarchist mob winning by force... eliminating or restricting the law of the Jungle does pick winners and losers verses what the law of the Jungle would pick as the winners and losers...
If the law of the jungle survival of the fittest is economic Darwinism then government is intelligent design..( if you’ll forgive the irony anything government could be called intelligent design)
The very act of a tax.. any tax affects who wins and losses... the very act of what that tax money goes for does affect who wins and who loses...