They won't do this after getting bids from numerous American cities. To choose a city in Canada would piss off too much of their customer base, including the president of the country, and would have a long term material impact on sales.
How many Americans are "pissed off" that their American cars are made in Canada?
They don't even know where their stuff is made any more. Toyota makes cars in Kentucky, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, West Virgina and Mississippi, but they're an "import". Ford makes vehicles in Mexico and Canada but they're "domestic".
Your point is valid, however no car factory built recently has garnered a fraction of the publicity/public interest that HQ2 has. What people don't know can't hurt them.
If nobody cares about HQ2, then why is it all over the news? You're underestimating it's reach.
Even if people wouldn't normally care, they will care now because of the publicity and bidding process that has taken place. People in cities who do not win will be upset when they lose, and people everywhere, including places that were never in the running, will be upset if they put the office in Canada. You must not have heard of the "America first" line of thinking that got trump elected, in part.
This is false. This whole process has been huge news. It's front page on sites like Washington Post, Philly.com, and the IndyStar and I've just checked multiple non tech forums where it's one of the busiest topics today.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. My parents, who are both in their 60s and not the least bit affiliated with technology, are both aware of Amazon’s headquarters search and brought it up with me when I was visiting over the holidays.
Part of me says that if they wanted to set up shop in Toronto they would have just done it, and not gone out of their way to attract attention like they have.
But on the other hand, if they want to run a PR campaign on the basis of "we seriously considered many US cities, and Toronto was a better option", they're certainly putting in the groundwork for that.
It's probably just going through their "due diligence" so they can pull the pin on a non-US but "North American" location. If they want to hire the best in the world it's easier to get visas for working in Toronto, and the path to citizenship is pretty straightforward.
I sincerely doubted that Hillary would lose the election, and we know how that went. You're probably right in that the majority of their customer base wouldn't care at all. However, even if 10% care, not an unreasonable guess, that would absolutely have a large material impact on sales.
The difference with those offices is they didn't tease 20+ US cities before building them. It's a nonissue to you, but it won't be to millions of Americans.
Have you seen Trump's tweets about Amazon and Bezos? He's already pissed at them. Frankly if I was in their shoes I would go with Toronto also to have some sort of hedging against the US political climate.
> Frankly if I was in their shoes I would go with Toronto also to have some sort of hedging against the US political climate.
Meh. However you feel about Trump, confidence in the US economy among businesses has been really high since his election, and even higher after the tax bill got passed. Look at what’s happening with Apple and the hundreds of other companies giving out bonuses and increasing spending in the US. Your comment might have made more sense closer to the election when everyone was making those gloom and doom predictions and nobody was sure what might really happen, but I think right now the US is more attractive to businesses than it’s probably been in a very long time.
That may be the whole point of the competition. Toronto could be the winner from before the competition even started, but holding the competition is still worthwhile. It is a way to get Toronto to cough up some goodies while simultaneously getting a way to claim that this is all Trump's fault.
I think you're overestimating the trumples. He has an abysmal approval rating, and the types of people who tend appprove of him (e.g. rural poor) aren't exactly big spenders/prime consumers or whatever. Trump will raise a stink about it, but I'd be very surprised if anyone normal/reasonable felt Amazon opening hq2 in Canada to be like a personal attack against America or something.
You also could have never guessed Trump would win the election, right? You and I are not tapped into the minds of plenty of Americans who will absolutely feel the feeling you've described. And your assertion about "trumpies" is just not true.
Forget about normal/reasonable, while trump's approval rating is abysmally low going by historical standards, it's still 30 something percent - a large number in absolute terms.
Just an aside, Trump supporters are NOT poor or the working class, this is a myth. The poor are non-voters and if they vote it's mostly Democrat by and large. Trump voters for the most part were middle class suburbanites or exburbanites.
Do you have a source for this? Historically, republican voters are both poorer and less educated (which in and of itself has class implications).
However, none of those demographics are relevant if they are all located in solid red states. Given that most people seem to attribute the swing state losses to the 'we need jobs' votes coming from the manufacturing and steel industries, the swing implies it's due to jobless (poor) and/or working class voters, the exact demographic you say was not the determinant.
Every income group over $50k voted Trump. If you scroll down you see that rural voters did indeed go for Trump, but they are much smaller proportion of the population than city folk or, the largest group, suburbanites (who went for Trump solidly as well).
I don't have a source handy for the poor being largely non-voters but I've seen hundreds over the years, it's well-established fact.
>Given that most people seem to attribute the swing state losses to the 'we need jobs' votes coming from the manufacturing and steel industries
Most people might make this attribution but it is not correct.
That article doesn't support your assertion. Those are overall exit polls, not polls of swing states. The swings states are the only
meaningful measure of comparison as to "why he won". The middle class are doing very well in red states like Iowa and Nebraska, but they are just as irrelevant
as a billionaire in manhattan or a welfare recipient in the bronx.
In Ohio, the state that has voted for every president to win since 1964, trump won across every level of education and every level of income except the MOST poor according to exit polls.
Okay, if you will only accept extremely specific tailored data on tiny fractions of the population you are perfectly capable of finding it yourself. I'll be happy to review it with you when you do.
The other responder to you has already done this for you, in fact, and the data there backs up my claims.
Plus, my main claim is that Trump voters are not the poor, they are middle-class suburbanites. My source absolutely backs that claim up.
Also, I'm not sure you understand the electoral landscape very well. Iowa is one of the more purple states, it was VERY blue for Obama and almost exactly dead even on Bush both times.
The makeup of Iowa is actually very similar to nearby Wisconsin and Michigan, which were the surprise red states that took the election for Trump.
A lot of the swing states are controlled by Republican state governments who impose draconian racially targeted voter suppression measures yes, but this is true in every election. 2000 was won for Bush first by deep and massive illegal voter suppression in Florida (taking people who had the right to vote off the rolls because they had a black-sounding name, for example) and only second by the Supreme Court.
The Republicans have less support nationally and in states almost every election and it is getting worse for them as time goes on, voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering are the only things keeping them in office.
I think your analysis is a bit Amerocentric. They said they wanted a second HQ in “North America” and received several Canadian bids, all but one of which failed to make the cut.
