The difference is that if there were no tax cuts, the plant would close down, the workers would all be laid off, and the state would lose ALL the tax revenue from the plant AND the workers. Plus they would be paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars every week in unemployment benefits to the laid off workers, many of whom many never find another job.
Not only that, the local economy would be devastated by the loss of income from the workers. And then tax revenues from the stores around town would go down and THEY would be forced to lay off people.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Oh, government makes special deals with companies precisely because it pays off for government and for the company.
That’s not the same as saying it is a good conservative thing to do, or that it is better overall for the economy. It’s certainly better for Indiana. And since the jobs were going to mexico, nobody cares that it isn’t good for wherever the jobs were going. But the tax revenue lost here is money that couldn’t be paid to lure another company in, or to give every company in the state a tax break which might have caused thousands of companies to each hire one more person.
Here's the real deal: Enforcing tariffs and encouraging US manufacturing will FORCE investment in robotics and other related technologies. Manufacturers like Carrier (UTI) will have to focus on cost substitution to improve efficiencies in order to maintain an affordable price point for their products.
Does anyone really think 1,000 workers will continue to work as they have in the past when comparable assembly skills can be acquired south-of-the-border? No, of course not. Rather, those 1,000 workers will be forced to develop addition skills & knowledge to assemble for complicated robots that will then assemble less challenging air conditioners.
For some reason, this line of reasoning is rarely broached. A big part is the controlled narrative that it's easier to simply shift the same-old, same-old to a lower cost region. That's no long-term solution, as we've all seen over the last 8 years.
The proper solution is to encourage innovation, investment and domestic skill improvement (training) as a means to support the national social contract. This is Trumpism in a nutshell.