Former President Donald Trump’s social media company outsourced jobs to workers in Mexico, even as Trump publicly opposed outsourcing on the campaign trail and threatened steep tariffs on companies that send jobs south of the border.
The firm’s use of workers in Mexico was confirmed by a spokesperson for Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social platform. The workers were hired through another entity to do coding and other technical duties, according to a person familiar with Trump Media. The reliance on foreign labor has sparked outrage among company employees, who have accused its management of betraying their “America First” ideals, the person said.
Outsourcing to Mexico helped spark a recent whistleblower letter to the Trump Media board that rocked the company.
This complaint, ProPublica reported last monthis calling for the board to fire CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman. The letter claims he “seriously” mismanaged the company. It also claims the company hires “America Last” — Nunes’s directive to hire only foreign contractors at the expense of “American workers who are deeply committed to our mission.”
“This approach not only contradicts the America First principles we stand for, but also raises concerns about the quality, dedication and alignment of our workforce with our core values,” the complaint said.
A Trump Media spokesman said the company uses “two separate workers” in Mexico. “The presentation of the fact that (Trump Media) works with two specialty contractors in Mexico as some kind of sensationalist scandal is just the latest in a long line of defamatory conspiracy theories invented by the serial producers at ProPublica,” the spokesman said.
The spokeswoman declined to answer other questions about the company’s Mexican contractors, including how much they were paid, how much they were used over time and how their hiring ties into Trump’s promises to punish firms that send work outside the U.S. The Trump campaign has not answered the questions.
For such a prominent company, Trump Media has a small permanent staff of just a few dozen people at the end of last year, only a fraction of whom work on Truth Social’s technology.
Trump Media’s hiring of Mexican coders also caused frustration among staff, a person with knowledge of the company said, because employees felt they lacked the technical knowledge to do the job.
On its main page Social truth bills itself as “Proudly Made in the United States of America. 🇺🇸”
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Screenshot courtesy of ProPublica
Both as president and during his campaign for a second term, Trump has criticized companies that ship jobs overseas, particularly to Mexico. If elected, he promised “stop outsourcing” and “to punish” companies that send work abroad.
For example, Trump recently threatened agricultural machinery giant John Deere with tariffs if it follows through on plans to move some of its production to Mexico.
“I’m just telling John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re going to put a 200 percent tariff on anything you want to sell into the United States,” Trump said.
He made a similar threat to automakers that build cars in Mexico, requiring them to hire American workers and manufacture domestically.
“I will not allow them to build a factory right across the border,” Trump promised, “and sell millions of cars in the United States and further destroy Detroit.”
Trump owns nearly 60% of the social media company, worth about $3.5 billion at Friday’s closing stock price — more than half of the former president’s net worth.
The results of the election are seen by many as a major factor in the future value of the company. As the Nov. 5 election nears, Trump Media’s stock price has fluctuated wildly, even as little has changed in the company’s actual business, which generates meager profits. The stock closed Friday down 40% from Tuesday’s recent peak. Despite this drop, it has almost doubled since the beginning of October.
One of Trump Media’s board members, Eric Swider, offered his defense of relying on foreign labor in a statement to ProPublica from his attorney.
“President Trump supports an ‘America First’ policy that includes putting American workers first. Trump Media, however, is a global multimedia company. It is common industry practice for a global multimedia company to use subcontractors who may in turn use coders located in a foreign country,” the statement said. “Global media companies like Trump Media will not have the power to control the employment decisions of their subcontractors, who may employ workers in many different countries in addition to the United States.”
Swider, a Puerto Rican businessman, sits on the board alongside more prominent figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Linda McMahon, a former Trump cabinet member who now co-chairs his transition team.
Outsourcing to Mexico isn’t the only time Trump Media relies on foreign workers. ProPublica reported earlier that the company used a foreign firm to find labor in the Balkans.
Nunes, for his part, is quoted in a new book on Truth Social, “The disappearing president,” bragging about his ability to cut costs at Trump Media, though he did not mention outsourcing.
“Nobody grew as fast as we did. I don’t think there’s another example that’s even close to us, especially with as little money as we spent,” Nunes said. “Don’t forget that. We built this for a fraction of what these other companies were built for.”
Do you have information about Trump Media that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at (email protected) and via Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at (email protected) or via Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.
Mika Rosenberg reported.
