Did President Obama even try to save American jobs being shipped to other countries?

The obvious answer is no, because, after all, it’s easier to bloviate and agitate than it is to actually do some real work.

During a town hall meeting this past summer, Obama ridiculed Donald Trump for saying he would try to save American jobs from being outsourced to other parts of the world.

“’Cause some of those jobs of the past are just not gonna come back. And when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned, I’m not gonna advertise for,” Obama said, referring to Trump.

“That he’s gonna bring all of these jobs back. Well how exactly you gonna do that? What are you gonna do? There’s no answer to it.

“He just says, ‘Well, I’m gonna negotiate a better deal. How exactly are you gonna negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, ‘he doesn’t have an answer,’” Obama said.

It turns out that “magic wand” is actually called “trying.”

The New York Times reported:

From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice president-elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory to announce a deal with the company to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.

Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will hearten his followers even before he takes office.

“I’m ready for him to come,” said Robin Maynard, a 24-year veteran of Carrier who builds high-efficiency furnaces and earns almost $24 an hour. “Now I can put my daughter through college without having to look for another job.”