CANNAINVESTOR Magazine March / April 2017 | Page 92

Trump, who during the presidential campaign, swiftly dismissed Labor Department job numbers and unemployment rates as “one of the greatest hoaxes” and as “phony” was quick to react positively to the January employment numbers. True to form and always anxious to be seen as omniscient, he took credit by stating, “So we’re happy about that. I think it’s going to continue to be big league.”

Bullying Carrier Corporation to maintain a manufacturing facility in Indiana gave Trump the momentum to force Ford to cancel plans to build a $1.65 billion plant in Mexico. Ford instead, announced an investment of $700 million into an existing Michigan plant.

Trump took a victory lap for the reversal of decisions by Carrier and Ford. While he might also succeed in establishing punitive tariffs on imports, it is doubtful that either will ensure that very many manufacturing jobs will return to the United States. If some jobs do return, the number will certainly be nowhere close to the 25 million jobs he has promised.

Low-Hanging Fruit for Job Growth - America’s Legal Cannabis Industry

If Trump is serious about adding new jobs, he should look no further than America’s fast-growing legal cannabis industry. With a stroke of his pen on one or more executive actions, Trump could easily add millions of good-paying jobs.

America’s legal cannabis industry is on fire. From 2013 to 2014 the U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74 percent, from $1.3 billion to $2.7 billion of annual revenues.

According to Arcview Market Research, legal cannabis sales in North America grew by 30 percent last year to $6.7 billion. A growth rate of 30% is remarkable, especially for an industry in an early stage of development. Arcview also projected that North American legal cannabis sales would exceed $20 billion by 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent.

To put this in perspective, the growth rate of the cannabis industry is larger and faster than the rate of growth during the dot-com era, when America’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at what was then considered to be an astounding 22 percent annual rate.

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