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Report: Dem Senator Who Attacks Foreign Labor Profits From It

Sen. Joe Donnelly / Getty
July 13, 2017

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D., Ind.) has long attacked free-trade policies and criticized Carrier Corp. for moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico, even as he profited from a family business that relies on Mexican labor.

The Associated Press received records showing Donnelly's family company, Stewart Superior Corp., has been shipping thousands of pounds of raw materials to Mexico, where the company has a factory that produces ink pads and other supplies.

The finished products are then transported back to a company facility in California.

The company's website says the company's Mexican factory "brings economical, cost competitive manufacturing and product development to our valued customers."

Donnelly's brother runs the company, but the senator previously served as a corporate officer and its general counsel before he was first elected to Congress in 2006.

In a financial disclosure form he filed in May, Donnelly reported owning as much as $50,000 in company stock and earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in dividends on it in 2016 alone.

During Donnelly's first run for the House in 2004, he attacked NAFTA and the practice of "outsourcing," a word he called "a fancy term for "someone in Indiana has lost their job."

Donnelly faces a tough reelection bid in 2018 in a state that President Donald Trump won by almost 20 points.

Published under: Indiana , Mexico , NAFTA