Trump promises CEOs carrots for staying and sticks for moving abroad

At a meeting of the CEOs of several top US companies at the White House yesterday, president Donald Trump, outlined is tough stance on moving manufacturing operations overseas. He said such companies would face a "substantial border tax."

Trump promised the group of Fortune 500 CEOs hailing from companies including Ford, Dell and DOW Chemical that he planned to cut corporate taxes "massively" and slash regulations to give companies incentives to stay in the US, at the same time he warned, they would face a steep border tax to sell their products in the US if they took their manufacturing abroad.

"A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States and build some factory someplace else and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border, that's not going to happen," Trump said. Trump, his senior advisor Steve Bannon, who plays a key role in driving much of Trump's trade policy behind the scene sat at a table with a group of CEOs and several of his top advisers.

"If you go to another country ... we are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in, which I think is fair," Trump said. "All you have to do is stay. Don't leave. Don't fire your people."

''We're going to be cutting regulation massively,'' Trump told the executives at the meeting, which was briefly open to the news media. ''Now, we're going to have regulation, and it'll be just as strong and just as good and just as protective of the people as the regulation we have right now. The problem with the regulation that we have right now is that you can't do anything. ... I have people that tell me that they have more people working on regulations than they have doing product.''