The Democratic Party issued a scathing takedown of Ivanka Trump for gushing about the creation of American jobs while her own products are made exclusively overseas.
“While Ivanka Trump is busy writing op-eds calling on American companies to ‘create more jobs’ ... workers in countries like Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and India are busy, too — working in conditions below industry standards to manufacture clothing and shoes for the first daughter’s namesake brand,” said the statement issued Thursday by the Democratic National Committee.
The DNC statement, titled “Ivanka Trump Is A Hypocrite,” attacked the first daughter’s “faux feminism” and the reportedly poor working conditions and low wages at her overseas factories, which employ mostly women.
A senior White House adviser for her father, the younger Trump has praised the president’s new National Council for the American Worker and U.S. companies’ commitments to hire in the U.S.
Twitter users didn’t hold back their criticism.
The White House is also portraying the first daughter as a champion of the U.S. worker.
According to an investigation last year by The Washington Post, none of Ivanka Trump’s products ― including clothing, jewelry, handbags and shoes ― are manufactured on U.S. soil. Factory standards for Trump-brand products lag behind those in other businesses in the U.S. apparel industry when it comes to “monitoring the treatment of the largely female workforce” overseas, the Post reported. Many American companies use outside auditors to ensure that factories comply with their conditions.
Workers making Ivanka Trump-branded products have complained of union intimidation, subsistence wages, long, exhausting hours, verbal abuse and sporadic compensation for overtime work, The Post and The Guardian reported last year.
In some factories, women were paid so little that they needed to leave their children with their parents to save money, according to the Post investigation, even as the first daughter pushes for paid parental leave and a better work-life balance for mothers.
Ivanka Trump’s attorney Jamie Gorelick told The Post that the first daughter was “concerned” about negative reports about the treatment of factory workers toiling overseas for her brand, adding that she “expects the company will respond appropriately.”
Trump stepped back from running her company after her father invited her to work at the White House. But she still owns and profits from the company.
The company has been relatively upfront about manufacturing overseas — though it has not provided a list of facilities for further media scrutiny. The president of the Ivanka Trump brand, Abigail Klem, told a Washington Post writer for a PBS report last year that it’s simply “unrealistic” to manufacture products in the U.S. because of costs and because there aren’t enough workers here trained for the apparel industry.
Nordstrom and, most recently, the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada have dropped Ivanka Trump products in the wake of boycott campaigns.
Hiring overseas appears to run in the family. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort filed a request with the U.S. Labor Department for permission to hire 61 foreign workers.
